<r* 


AN   APOLOGY   FOR   OLD    MAIDS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO   •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD, 

TORONTO 


AN   APOLOGY   FOR 
OLD    MAIDS 

AND    OTHER   ESSAYS 


BY 

HENRY   DWIGHT   SEDGWICK 

AUTHOR   OF 

ITALY  IN  THE  THIRTEENTH  CENTURY,"  "  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  ITALY 

"  THE   NEW    AMERICAN   TYPE   AND    OTHER   ESSAYS  " 

"  ESSAYS  ON  GREAT  WRITERS,"  ETC. 


WITH   A   PREFACE   BY 
OWEN  WISTER 


gorfc 

THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 
1916 

All  rights  rtservtd 


Copyright,  1909,  1913,  1914,  1915  and  1916, 
By  the  Atlantic  Monthly  Company. 

Copyright,  1915, 
By  The  Yale  Publishing  Association. 

COPYRIGHT,  1916, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  November,  1916. 


'j'v'      ,.V  o  :^j  i./ 
>\,^2^:V ":  J .jtf^.J' 


J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


TO 

THE  CLASS  OF   1916 

OF 

THE   BREARLEY   SCHOOL 

THIS  VOLUME  IS  AFFECTIONATELY 
DEDICATED 


"  Retire  into  thyself." 

MARCUS  AURBLIUS. 


355508 


All  the  essays  in  this  volume  appeared  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  except  "An  Apology  for  Old  Maids"  which 
appeared  in  the  Tale  Review.  For  permission  to  re- 
publish  them  here  I  am  indebted  to  the  kindness  of 

the  Editors  of  those  reviews. 

H.  D.  S. 

NEW  YORK,  1916. 


vii 


TABLE   OF    CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE  BY  OWEN  WISTER xi 

AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS       .....  i 

DE  SENECTUTE 20 

THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST          ....  40 

CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE 70 

ON  BEING  ILL 82 

THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW no 

A  FORSAKEN  GOD 135 

THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 164 

LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM      .        .        .203 


PREFACE 

ONLY  a  few  hours  ago  I  paused  at  a  teeming  book-stall 
in  the  South  Station,  Boston.  Beside  me  stood  Inelegant 
Leisure  in  petticoats,  choosing.  The  emotion  that  rose 
in  me  was  one  of  thankfulness  that  a  paper  famine  is  said 
to  be  upon  us. 

Lot  was  assured  that  a  given  number  of  respectable  citi 
zens  could  avert  from  his  town  its  doom.  Had  we,  I 
wondered,  among  our  huge  population  of  novelists  enough 
for  salvation  ?  —  Well,  I  thought  next,  among  another 
company  it's  more  hopeful.  A  small  company,  to  be 
sure,  and  they  don't  live  in  the  best-seller  belt ;  but,  any 
how,  they  do  live  —  and  persist. 

Why  is  it  that  our  American  essayists  are  on  the  whole 
so  good  and  our  American  novelists  are  on  the  whole  so 
bad  ?  As  with  guns  so  with  books  it  is  the  man  behind 
them  that  counts.  He  matters  ;  more  than  his  talent,  or 
his  learning,  or  his  subject,  more  than  anything,  he  mat 
ters.  It  is  Montaigne  himself  we  enjoy  ;  it  is  Scott  him 
self,  Scott  the  man  throughout  his  romances,  who  lives 
most,  who  fills  and  warms  their  pages  with  his  noble, 
xi 


xii  PREFACE 

kind  wholesomeness.  A  novel  taps  its  author's  intimate 
essence  just  as  searchingly  as  any  essay,  is  as  much  a 
vehicle  for  interpretation  and  comment  (visible  or  invisi 
ble),  and  the  pose  of  impersonality  adopted  by  certain 
French  writers  deceives  not  this  generation  and  never 
need  have  deceived  any.  Inevitably  the  man  flows  into 
his  book,  and  if  he  is  a  vacuum  the  book  will  be  empty 
—  and  so  back  we  come  to  our  question  again  :  why  do 
our  essays  mostly  size  up  so  well  while  our  stories  size 
up  mostly  so  ill  ?  Pick  up  the  first,  you  find  a  somebody 
behind  them  generally,  behind  the  last  generally  a  nobody. 
But  why  ? 

Do  these  writing  nobodys  fancy  a  real  novel  an  easy 
thing  to  make,  or  merely  that  a  quack  novel  is  an  easy 
thing  to  sell  ?  Is  Inelegant  Leisure  in  petticoats  the  sole 
root  of  the  evil  ?  It  is  to  be  noticed  at  our  railroad-stalls 
that  the  fresh  work  of  fiction  has  come  to  bear  a  startling 
resemblance  to  the  box  of  fresh  candy  beside  it,  and  that 
over  both  Inelegant  Leisure  seems  to  hover  impartially  on 
her  way  to  her  week-ends. 

The  question  is  worth  an  essay.  Let  some  one  of  that 
good  company  deal  with  it  and  tell  us  how  it  comes  about 
that  most  of  our  essayists  have  from  the  early  days  even 
until  the  present  written  all  round  most  of  our  novelists ; 
that  Irving  in  his  kind  is  better  than  Cooper  in  his  kind  ; 
that  Emerson  is  better  than  Hawthorne;  that  "The 
Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-table ' '  has  more  life  in  it  than 


PREFACE  xiii 

"Elsie  Venner"  ;  that  Poe's  critical  writing  is  more 
remarkable  (for  that  time  of  day)  than  his  tales,  which 
Tieck  and  Hoffmann  obviously  prompted  ;  and  that  our 
two  most  famous  pieces  of  American  prose  belong,  both 
of  them,  in  their  essence,  to  the  family  of  the  essay  — 
Washington's  Farewell  Address,  and  Lincoln's  Speech  at 
Gettysburg. 

I  merely  look  the  present  ground  over,  glance  at  our 
bursting  shelf  of  fiction,  compare  it  to  our  decent  shelf 
of  essays,  observe  the  railroad  book-stalls  and  Inelegant 
Leisure  in  petticoats,  survey  the  best-seller  belt  —  and 
offer  my  American  thanks  to  our  American  essayists  for 
saving  our  face. 

Yes ;  that  is  indeed  what  they  do ;  they  save  our 
face.  We  can  point  to  them  without  blushing.  Amid 
the  weltering  inanity  of  present  American  Letters  it  is 
their  pens  chiefly  that  write  the  leavening  sentences  of 
wit,  thought,  and  cultivation,  it  is  their  books  mainly  that 
we  send  to  friends  in  the  civilized  world,  because  they 
show  that  all  of  us  do  not  live  in  the  best-seller  belt,  that 
some  of  us  are  writers  and  readers  with  civilized  intelli 
gence.  Our  gratitude  to  them  is  kin  to  that  which  we 
feel  towards  any  and  every  American  who  through  word 
or  deed  has  helped  the  Allies.  They  are  our  vindicators. 

In  the  track  of  Mr.  Sedgwick's  first  volume  of  essays 
this  also  shall  voyage  for  our  vindication.  He  has  built 
here,  as  it  were,  a  quiet  house  of  revery.  In  it,  as  you 


xiv  PREFACE 

wander  about  among  the  various  rooms,  you  seem  to  hear 
the  sound  of  an  organ  somewhere,  patches  of  light  from 
old  stained  glass  seem  to  fall  on  certain  spots,  and  not 
a  noise  from  the  street  enters.  At  one  of  the  windows, 
indeed,  the  War  looks  in  :  but  the  War  is  no  noise  from 
the  street ;  through  it  speaks  the  voice  of  our  stricken 
planet.  In  Mr.  Sedgwick's  pages  the  "incantations  of 
hope  ' '  —  I  borrow  a  word  from  one  of  them  —  are  sub 
dued  to  mingle  with  many  other  strains.  I  have  found 
no  better  reply  to  Emerson's  fallacy  that  a  translation  is 
as  good  as  the  original  than  a  paragraph  of  Mr.  Sedg 
wick's.  I  cannot  be  as  sure  as  he  is  that  Goethe's  influ 
ence  upon  us  was  once  so  potent  —  but  the  author  has 
reflected  about  this  and  I  have  not.  Indeed,  the  point 
is  not  that  you  agree  or  disagree  with  Mr.  Sedgwick 
about  Old  Age  and  Youth,  or  can  derive  simultaneous 
comforts  from  reason  and  mysticism  :  the  house  is  full 
of  tender  beauty  and  ministers  like  the  quiet  Andante  of 
some  symphony  to  the  spirit's  well-being. 

OWEN    WISTER. 
OCTOBER  19,   1916. 


AN   APOLOGY   FOR   OLD    MAIDS 


AN  APOLOGY   FOR  OLD 
MAIDS 

MARRIED  people,  animated  by  the  prejudices  of 
an  animal  ancestry  and  by  a  jealous  esprit  de  corps, 
long  ago  created  a  legend  about  celibates,  which 
depicts  them  as  crotchety,  graceless,  ill-dressed, 
ill-mannered,  ugly,  and  selfish ;  and  they  have 
taught  this  legend  to  so  many  generations  of 
children  that  even  now  little  boys  look  on  celi 
bates  with  disdain.  And,  as  little  boys  grow 
to  be  bigger  boys,  disdain  gains  support  from  a 
vague  knowledge  that  if  celibates  had  succeeded 
in  winning  the  world  over  to  their  horrid  way  of 
thinking,  they,  princes  of  the  kingdom  of  youth, 
would  never  have  come  into  their  own  at  all.  This 
silly  legend  has  also  been  taken  up  by  thought 
less  jesters,  who  ridicule  that  group  of  celibates 
least  able  to  defend  themselves,  elderly  women ; 
and  their  mockery  encourages  boys  in  the  gross 
illusion.  But  the  legend  gives  way  before  a 
widening  experience;  and  the  high  idealism  that 

B  I 


fc:?-?;       AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS 

impels  celibates  to  take  their  solitary  way  must 
always,  sooner  or  later,  make  itself  known  by 
its  fruits. 

Who,  that  looks  back  on  the  steadily  deepening, 
steadily  refining,  memories  of  the  past,  does  not 
see  some  celibate  figure  that  shone  on  his  path 
with  a  peculiar  light  ?  Ordinarily  such  figures 
are  the  figures  of  women,  for  the  deprivation  of 
motherhood  is  a  greater  loss  to  a  woman  than  the 
deprivation  of  paternity  to  a  man,  and  renders 
her  more  fit  to  pour  into  an  alien  channel  her 
dammed-up  sympathies;  but  it  is  not  always  so 
—  the  celibate  brother,  uncle,  or  priest,  may  fill 
as  large  a  space  in  the  gracious  retrospect  of 
memory  for  a  girl  as  the  unmarried  woman  for  a 
boy.  The  child  across  whose  path  the  light 
from  that  figure  fell  could  not  analyze  those 
qualities  of  which  he  was  aware  in  the  spinster, 
but  he  soon  learned  to  recognize  them,  to  enjoy 
them,  to  love  them,  to  need  them.  In  her  com 
pany,  free  from  the  spirit  of  the  household,  un- 
vexed  by  the  genius  of  the  family,  he  wandered 
into  a  pleasant,  unfenced  spaciousness,  where  his 
individuality  found  a  liberal  reception,  where  his 
tastes  and  whims  received  each  a  separate  and 
personal  welcome.  Perhaps  the  radiant  figure 
was  an  aunt  or  elderly  cousin,  bearing  on  her 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS  3 

face  the  show  of  solitary  communions,  who,  at 
his  call,  wrapping  her  shoulders  in  a  white  shawl 
would  walk  beside  him  in  a  tolerant  yet  restrain 
ing  sympathy,  as  if  she  beheld  what  he  did  "with 
larger,  other  eyes  than"  his,  and  suggested  ap 
preciations  here  and  there  quite  different  from 
family  appreciations.  She  did  not  take  away 
from  his  interest  or  pleasure  in  the  family  house 
hold,  but  controlled  and  encouraged  those  moods, 
those  closed  compartments  of  a  boy's  life  into 
which  a  family  has  no  admittance;  she  was  the 
compassionate  goddess  of  solitude,  of  melancholy, 
of  those  vague  affections  that  in  the  period  of 
adolescence  grow  into  religion  or  love,  and  spend 
themselves  in  moody  wanderings  through  fields 
and  woods,  in  bad  verses,  in  indignant  outbursts 
at  the  commonness,  the  vulgarity  of  life.  She 
was  not  called  upon  to  reconcile  those  fitful 
periods  with  due  regard  for  the  dinner  hour,  for 
company,  for  lessons,  for  the  social  duties  of 
croquet  or  tennis;  she  did  not  repeat  the  inade 
quate  formulas  of  tutorial  and  domestic  life; 
she  did  not  have  to  enforce  rules  based  on  the 
greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number  of  children ; 
she  left  unopened  those  budgets  of  good  advice, 
which  each  generation  solemnly  receives  from 
the  generation  before,  and  passes  on  solemnly 


4  AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS 

to  the  generation  after.  She  stood  apart  as  the 
friend  of  his  individuality,  of  his  foolish  fancies, 
of  his  conceits  and  wayward  desires,  of  his  boyish 
admirations  and  hopes,  of  his  incapacities  for 
dealing  with  the  ordinary  life  about  him. 

Perhaps  that  graceful  and  radiant  figure,  which 
to  the  inefficient  boy  appeared  the  embodiment  of 
wisdom  and  sweet  reason,  had  cast  at  her,  behind 
her  back,  from  some  careless  lips,  the  epithet  "old 
maid."  The  coarse  monosyllables  fell  with  a  thud 
on  his  indignant  ear.  The  irreverence  packed  into 
that  term  was  only  comparable  to  indifference 
to  a  moonlit  night,  to  Shelley,  to  the  arched  pine 
walk,  to  the  violin.  The  scoff,  whether  intended 
as  such  or  not,  was  the  first  thing  to  set  him  won 
dering  as  to  the  differences  between  that  beloved 
figure  and  other  figures  also  beloved,  and  to  offer 
the  clue  that  led  to  the  explanation  of  those  dif 
ferences.  Was  it  because  she  was  an  old  maid, 
that  she  shed  so  fresh  an  atmosphere  around  her, 
like  an  unseen  spring  cooling  and  quickening 
a  mossy  spot;  that  she  stood  between  the  com 
mon  conventional  course  of  daily  family  life  and 
the  impatient  demands  of  adolescent  moods  ;  that 
she  applied  her  comprehensive  yet  unobtrusive 
criticism  to  the  standards  of  what  he  called  the 
world  ;  that  she  could  comfort  so  effectively  hurts 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS  5 

that  others  unwittingly  gave,  and  sympathize 
with  the  virtue  mingled  and  blended  with  his 
faults  ?  Was  that  the  reason  that  she  cheered 
and  encouraged  the  lonely  little  boy  by  asserting 
the  value  of  his  individual  soul  ?  Were  such  the 
consequences  of  childlessness,  of  perpetual 
maidenhood  ?  Then  why  did  those  boys  and 
girls,  who  embodied  his  world  and  had  no  inkling 
of  his  fitful  moods,  call  her  "old  maid"  in  derision  ? 
The  phrase  "old  maid,"  to  which  the  mating 
instincts  have  grudged  the  gentleness  and  refine 
ment  of  polysyllables,  conjures  up  a  vision  of  outer 
isolation,  which  to  the  uncelibate  looks  cold  and 
dismal.  A  ghostly  atmosphere  envelops  that 
limbo  beyond  the  hearth,  outside  the  home;  and 
the  lonely  women  wandering  there  wear  a  sad 
livery.  Are  we  deceived  by  the  imagination,  or 
by  the  flickering  light  cast  by  the  ruddy  fire  of  our 
hearths ;  or  is  the  veiled  melancholy,  that  as  chil 
dren  we  saw  and  did  not  understand  yet  found  so 
sympathetic  to  our  discontents,  a  sign  that  nature 
has  punished  the  violation  of  her  law  ?  Nature, 
goddess  of  instinct,  stern,  as  she  needs  must  be  in 
order  to  be  kind,  compels  obedience  by  what  means 
she  can ;  and  upon  those  that  disobey  she  sets 
the  stamp  of  her  displeasure.  At  her  bidding, 
corporeal  existence  rebels  against  final  extinction. 


6  AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS 

Backward  it  looks,  and  through  the  sequent 
generations,  human  and  prehuman,  back  through 
the  vastness  of  unrecorded  time,  all  along  in  unin 
terrupted  illumination,  it  sees  the  cheerful  glow 
of  life,  the  radiance  of  the  sacred  fire,  flaming, 
gleaming,  glimmering,  without  a  break,  back  to 
the  first  Promethean  spark  that  glittered  in  the 
lifeless  world ;  turning  forward,  it  beholds  the 
dark  come  again  in  all  the  repulsiveness  of  cold, 
dead  vacancy.  The  poor  warm  body,  rejoicing 
in  the  sun,  shudders  in  corporeal  trepidation ;  it 
cannot  escape  the  self-reproach  of  treason,  that  it 
has  suffered  the  sacred  fire,  —  tended,  cherished, 
preserved,  with  such  great  pains,  at  such  great 
cost,  fed  upon  love,  devotion,  and  self-denial,  — 
to  die  out.  No  living  thing  can  betray  the  confi 
dence  of  nature  without  remorse ;  and  that  mute 
self-condemnation,  in  spite  of  the  persuasions  of 
conscience  or  the  bravado  of  reason,  leaves  its 
ineffaceable  mark. 

Nor  is  this  consciousness  of  treason  her  only 
punishment.  The  old  maid  bars  against  herself 
the  single  gate  that  leads  into  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  of  this  world ;  she  shall  never  have  pos 
session  of  those 

Stragglers  into  loving  arms 
Those  climbers  up  of  knees 


AN  APOLOGY   FOR  OLD  MAIDS  7 

that  constitute  for  fathers  and  mothers  the  reve 
lation  and  proof  of  a  divine  element  in  humanity; 
she  shall  never  see  incarnate  in  big  round  eyes  and 
baby  fingers  the  innocence,  the  love,  the  faith, 
the  fearlessness,  of  that  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

The  celibate  is  brave,  and  what  seems,  to  us  a 
distinguishing  mark  of  inward  pain,  may  be  in 
part  the  grimness  of  a  resolute  courage.  ?  In  days 
gone  by,  old  maids  were  strong  in  the  belief  of 
an  immortal  soul.  Upborne  by  an  exalted  mood, 
they  rebuked  the  body,  and  looked  forward  to 
the  rapturous  union  of  Being  with  Being.  Now 
that  the  spirit  apart  from  the  body  is  less  easily 
perceived,  the  celibate  has  the  greater  need  of 
courage ;  to  defy  nature,  in  spite  of  religious  dis 
belief,  solely  for  the  sake  of  an  ideal,  for  the  sake 
of  spiritual  salvation  during  the  brief  period  of 
bodily  life,  has  a  touch  of  the  heroic.  For  nature 
is  no  mean  enemy ;  she  does  not  turn  and  run  be 
fore  a  sudden  onslaught  of  spiritual  frenzy.  Na 
ture  can  wait ;  this  is  the  source  of  her  power. 
Individuals  upon  individuals,  generations  upon 
generations,  may  rebel  against  her  laws ;  she 
abides  and  punishes  the  disobedient.  She  abides, 
and  in  the  course  of  time  the  wilfulness  of  her  chil 
dren  spends  itself,  their  passion  for  things  of  the 
spirit  droops,  and  they  return,  "like  colts  that 


8  AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS 

have  frisked  for  a  day  in  the  fields,"  back  to  their 
stalls  and  obedience  at  night.  Only  a  steadfast 
courage,  a  steadfast  faith,  in  the  daily,  hourly, 
momentary,  worth  of  the  spirit  continues  to  hold 
out.  The  solitary  old  maid  who  has  turned  her 
back  upon  the  comforts  of  affection,  of  sympathy, 
of  a  home,  of  children,  of  comradeship  in  passing 
through  the  great  dark  of  this  existence,  in  which 
like  children  we  need  to  hold  one  another's  hands 
to  keep  our  courage  up,  may  not  to  the  careless 
eye  present  a  conspicuous  figure  of  heroism,  but 
perhaps  the  ideal  has  no  more  valiant  champion 
than  she. 

Though  from  one  point  of  view  the  old  maid's 
struggle  for  her  own  spiritual  salvation  may  seem 
to  be  a  matter  of  no  special  concern  to  general  hu 
man  society,  yet  from  another  it  is  of  much  con 
cern,  for  she  can  render  society  services  of  great 
and  peculiar  importance.  Her  opportunities  call 
for  her;  her  uses  make  her  a  necessary  supple 
ment  to  the  mother  in  all  the  tasks  laid  on  women, 
other  than  the  primary  task  of  maternity. 

The  mother  is  a  passionate  partisan,  she  is  all 
for  nature.  Whatever  her  maternal  feelings  sug 
gest  becomes  her  duty,  her  creed,  her  truth.  She 
sacrifices  herself  for  her  children,  she  is  ready  to 
sacrifice  all  things  else  for  them ;  she  is  a  fanatic 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS  9 

in  the  cause  of  animal  immortality  and  prostrates 
herself  in  blind  adoration  before  the  god  of  earthly 
life.  Her  judgments  are  all  crooked,  for  she  bases 
all  her  opinions  upon  the  law  of  maternity,  as  a 
lawyer  bases  his  on  the  Constitution.  The  ma 
ternal  instinct,  so  strong  emotionally,  so  weak 
rationally,  bursts  into  intemperate  theories.  She 
values  no  principle  but  that  of  animal  life,  she 
knows  no  measure  but  that  of  numbers.  Quan 
tity  !  Quantity  !  is  the  mother's  cry. 

To  the  old  spinster,  safe  at  anchor  out  of  the 
hot  current  of  corporeal  existence,  the  quality 
of  life  is  of  more  consequence  than  its  quantity  — 
though  more  life  is  good,  the  fuller  life  is  better; 
and  she  finds  her  duty  in  the  endeavor  to  better 
the  quality  of  life.  She  regards  with  sympathy, 
but  not  without  criticism,  the  fierce  physical 
desire  that  a  race,  a  species,  a  family,  shall  in 
herit  the  earth,  and  sets  herself  apart  as  a  disciple 
of  the  spirit  to  temper  that  animal  heat  with  the 
cold  impartiality  of  those  who  have  no  hope  of 
animal  immortality.  By  virtue  of  her  isolation  she 
is  a  critic.  She  denies  that  life  fulfils  its  best 
function  in  procreation ;  she  estimates  life  in  it 
self,  for  itself;  she  judges  each  life  as  a  whole 
complete  in  itself. 

Take  friendship  with  an  old  maid ;   it  is  not  the 


10     AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS 

; 

sunlight  indeed,  but  there  is  in  it  a  twilight  calm, 
a  cool,  to  be  enjoyed,  which  a  man  can  find  in  no 
other  human  relation.  Parents  are  friends,  but 
they  cannot  wholly  shake  off"  all  shadow  of  con 
straint  that  comes  from  the  respect  and  obedi 
ence  due  to  their  office :  they  are  hedged  about  by 
the  gap  that  must  separate  one  generation  from 
another.  Children,  likewise,  are  more  and  less 
than  friends.  Man  for  man  has  an  affection, 
sometimes,  like  that  of  Montaigne  for  La  Boetie 
of  an  intense  and  exalted  character.  But  friend 
ship  for  an  old  maid,  in  its  comfortable  freedom 
from  the  troubles  of  intemperate  feeling,  from  the 
duties  of  a  son,  a  husband,  a  father,  a  lover,  gives 
the  special  charm  and  satisfaction  derived  from 
a  different  range  of  sensibilities,  from  the  variety 
and  interest  of  another  series  of  thoughts  and 
opinions.  There  is  a  singular  sweetness  in  this 
contact  with  the  unmating  soul,  in  this  pleasant 
introspect  into  the  cool  sequestered  garden  of  a 
nunnery. 

In  conversation  the  old  maid  is  not  only  un 
hampered  by  the  immediate  corollaries  of  mater 
nity,  diet,  hygiene,  and  all  the  threads  that  weave 
the  web  and  woof  of  home;  but  she  also  may 
spread  her  wings  in  general  freedom.  She  has  no 
deep  concern  but  her  own  soul,  and  may  risk 


AN  APOLOGY   FOR  OLD  MAIDS  n 

the  consequences  of  thought,  of  beliefs  and  dis 
beliefs,  of  imaginings  and  hopes.  She  enters 
into  a  conversation  for  its  own  sake,  accepting 
it  as  an  important  matter  for  the  time  being  com 
mitted  to  her  charge.  And  her  talk  is  steeped 
with  a  fine  flavor  by  her  realization  of  human 
relations;  these  are  not  taken  for  granted  nor 
neglected,  neither  magnified  nor  belittled,  but 
regarded  as  the  principal  business  on  our  human 
pilgrimage,  as  the  materials  out  of  which  in  the 
main  human  lives  are  made. 

Old  maids  are  the  best  readers  of  books.  A 
mother  reads  a  book,  whether  for  knowledge,  or 
recreation,  with  the  absent-mindedness  of  a  shop 
per  who  holds  a  ribbon  to  the  light,  inwardly 
pondering  how  its  color  will  match  the  already  pur 
chased  stuff  at  home.  An  old  maid  has  no  such 
preoccupations ;  for  her  a  book  stands  on  its  own 
feet,  to  be  judged  according  to  its  service  to  her. 
She  reads  biography,  not  for  useful  examples, 
but  for  the  human  interest  of  a  human  life;  his 
tory,  not  as  the  story  of  a  world  in  which  she  is 
but  a  steward  of  interests  vested  in  the  heir,  but 
of  her  own  world ;  poetry,  as  an  emanation  from 
the  spirit  of  life,  not  merely  as  the  blossoming 
of  the  imagination  in  the  mating  season,  that  loses 
its  sweetness  as  soon  as  the  married  state  has 


12  AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS 

become  a  matter  of  habit.  In  fact,  all  that  books 
deal  with,  like  life  itself,  wears  a  different  aspect 
to  the  mother  and  to  the  old  maid,  for  their  morals 
are  of  a  different  order :  one  has  the  morality  of  an 
immortal  humanity,  the  other  that  of  the  brief- 
lived  individual  spirit,  whose  affair  is  not  with  the 
future  but  the  present.  Manners  come  specially 
within  an  old  maid's  care.  They  are  the  outward 
manifestation  of  all  human  relations,  and  in  most 
of  our  relations  with  our  fellows  the  outward  mani 
festation  is  more  important  than  the  inward  senti 
ment.  Life  consists  in  meetings  with  friends, 
relations,  acquaintances,  strangers;  and  the  one 
art  that  can  render  these  random  meetings,  the 
chance  crossings  of  our  paths,  anything  but  a 
burden  to  hurrying  travellers,  we  commit  to  no 
special  study  or  training,  to  no  special  group  of 
guardians  and  teachers.  The  old  maid  is  the  natu 
ral  mistress  of  an  atelier  for  manners.  A  mother's 
manners  are  rubbed,  scratched,  and  scarred  by 
affairs  of  far  greater  importance ;  the  old  maid's 
manners  have  a  lightness,  a  silvery  sheen ;  and, 
in  her  lack  of  preoccupation,  she  is  able  to  un 
derstand  their  social  use,  she  is  free  to  study  what 
theories  and  methods  may  teach  the  rest  of  us 
how  to  appreciate,  at  least  how  to  recognize  and 
respect  the  art. 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS  13 

There  is  also  the  function  of  education.  Watch 
the  mother,  see  her  at  her  board,  cutting  bread 
and  pouring  out  tumblers  of  milk  for  half  a  dozen 
proofs  of  her  loyalty  to  her  theory;  see  her 
stitching,  basting,  darning,  or  computing  next 
year's  budget,  with  her  mental  eye  fixed  far  on 
generations  yet  unborn.  She,  in  obedience  to  her 
maternal  instinct,  not  only  feeds,  clothes,  and 
physics,  but  she  also  trains  and  teaches,  drops 
into  little  open,  twittering  minds  her  own  mater 
nal  theories;  and  even  when  her  children  grow 
into  adolescence  she  wishes  to  guide  and  govern 
them  according  to  her  feelings.  Her  instinct 
may  very  well  take  care  of  them  during  the  in 
stinctive  period  of  childhood,  for  children  are 
likely  to  tread  the  great  highroad  of  animal  life ; 
but  for  her  to  continue  her  control  when  they 
become  reasoning  beings  is  another  matter.  In 
struction,  the  art  of  encouraging  rational  pro 
cesses,  of  developing  the  character,  of  catching 
and  fixing  as  a  durable  possession  the  winged 
idealism  of  youth,  is  a  matter  not  for  maternal 
zeal  but  for  cool  and  sober  impartiality.  It  is 
not  in  the  school  that  this  instruction  is  best  given, 
but  in  the  thousand  opportunities  that  spring 
up  in  the  companionship  between  the  elder  sister 
and  the  little  brother,  between  the  aunt  and  her 


14     AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS 

nephew,  between  the  old  friend  and  the  young; 
for  in  that  companionship  the  boy's  heart  is  un 
locked,  his  affection  leads  his  mind,  and  both 
heart  and  mind  become  docile  and  curious.  The 
old  maid,  under  the  impulse  of  her  celibate  ideals, 
seeks  to  quicken  the  boy's  individual  soul,  to  teach 
him  to  regard  dispassionately  our  social  struc 
ture  (built  as  it  must  be  upon  the  animal  concep 
tion  of  life),  and  above  all  to  regard  himself  as 
a  creature  capable  of  individual  completeness, 
whose  essential  problem  in  life  is  neither  to 
procure  for  himself  animal  immortality  nor  to 
possess  the  earth,  but  to  attain  a  conception 
of  perfection. 

This  virginal  attitude  towards  the  instruction 
of  children  seems  to  illustrate  the  social  use 
fulness  of  old  maids,  their  general  fitness  to  be 
critics  of  society.  No  one,  of  course,  could  sug 
gest  that  they  should  be  the  only  critics  of  social 
changes ;  that  task  would  be  out  of  all  proportion 
to  their  numbers  and  to  their  powers,  and  not 
specially  related  to  the  trait  that  distinguishes 
them  from  other  people.  Their  service  is  not  to 
do  the  work  of  criticism,  but  to  point  out  the 
right  position  for  criticism  to  take,  the  right  at 
titude  to  adopt.  The  unencumbered  celibates 
more  easily  than  others  may  climb  the  heights 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS      15 

of  impartiality,  from  where  by  the  dawning  light 
of  justice,  which  as  yet  only  lightens  those 
heights,  they  will  command  a  full  view  of  the  social 
situation  as  a  whole.  Take  socialism,  for  in 
stance;  see  wall  upon  wall,  the  ancient  con 
ceptions  of  caste  and  class  and  individualism,  of 
take-and-keep-that-can,  deeply  entrenched,  honor 
ably  and  dishonorably  fortified  and  defended, 
which  are  built  out  of  the  dogma  that  children  shall 
succeed  to  parents  in  undiminished  privileges  and 
prerogatives,  and  which  rest  on  the  foundation  of 
animal  immortality ;  and  see  outside  those  walls  the 
men  that  have  sons  to  inherit  but  no  privileges  to 
bequeath.  What  greater  need  could  there  be  for  dis 
passionate  guides  detached  from  all  loyalty  to  that 
deep,  fundamental  passion  of  animal  immortality  ? 
In  the  social  order,  mothers,  with  their  fierce  ma 
ternal  instincts  and  rich  emotions,  with  their 
disdain  of  reason,  are  constant  supporters  of  pas 
sion  on  both  sides ;  in  great  measure  they  deter 
mine  the  attitude  and  the  action  of  men ;  so  that, 
if  only  to  undo  and  counteract  the  influence  of 
their  married  sisters,  old  maids  have  much  to  do 
here. 

The  difference  between  their  hands  is  a  fair 
index  to  the  differences  between  a  mother  and  a 
spinster  in  creed  and  deed,  in  friendship,  educa- 


1 6  AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS 

tion,  or  critical  usefulness.  A  mother's  hand 
with  its  tenderness,  its  caressing,  smoothing,  sooth 
ing,  promises  of  warmth  after  cold,  of  comfort 
after  privation,  of  happiness  after  pain,  with  its 
melodious  rhythmic  movement  which  lulls  and 
charms  the  troubled  child,  is  the  incomparable 
instrument  of  the  corporal  sequence  of  life ;  her 
hand  strokes  the  child  as  if  the  whole  service  of 
the  precedent  ages  had  been  to  shape  and  per 
fect  it  as  an  instrument  of  maternal  love,  as  if  the 
great  artist  Time  had  bent  over  it,  thought  over  it, 
toiled  over  it,  planned,  modelled,  devised,  and 
imagined,  till  with  the  ripeness  of  perfection,  he 
had  rested  content.  The  hand  of  the  maid  is 
different.  Its  touch  brings  no  corporeal  promises, 
its  loneliness  almost  disturbs  the  animal  within  us, 
and  yet  it  seems  fraught  with  something  just  be 
yond  the  power  of  touch  to  impart,  as  if  touch 
were  struggling  up  into  language,  charged  with  a 
message  beyond  our  comprehension  and  a  sym 
pathy  beyond  our  reach.  Celibate  fingers  have 
clasped  no  lover's  hand,  they  have  caressed  no 
child,  they  touch  with  the  composure  of  the 
evening  wind,  which  nevertheless  brings  to  us 
the  knowledge  that  it  has  touched  great  things 
afar  and  will  touch  great  things  again,  and  in  be 
tween  touches  us. 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS      17 

The  touch  of  the  old  maid's  hands,  that  once 
soothed  and  comforted  our  adolescent  griefs 
and  discontents,  explains  the  deepest  service 
which  the  celibate  may  render  to  society.  She 
is  free  to  devote  herself  to  an  ideal,  to  the  ideal 
of  the  individual  life,  to  a  passionate  renunciation 
of  the  corporal  self  and  the  passionate  worship  of 
That,  which  though  we  do  not  know  it,  or  at  least 
do  not  perceive  it,  yet  may  be.  She  has  a  priestly 
office  to  fill,  not  dissimilar  to  that  of  her  elder 
sisters,  the  nuns,  but  more  fructifying,  more  in 
telligent.  It  is  the  mission  of  her  Celibate  Order 
to  go  into  the  world  to  combat  the  original  sin  of 
our  animal  origin,  which  brings  with  it  the  greed, 
the  grossness,  the  pride,  the  injustice,  of  animals 
that  have  prevailed  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 
This  Celibate  Order  is  a  modern  priesthood,  and 
our  society,  whatever  its  self-satisfaction  and  its 
self-confidence,  is  not  wholly  without  the  need 
of  a  priesthood.  For  the  primary  function  of 
priesthood  now,  just  as  it  has  always  been,  is  to 
maintain  and  encourage  an  acceptance  of  a  belief 
in  holiness.  Priests,  in  theory  at  least,  consti 
tute  a  band  set  apart  from  the  hurry  and  sweat 
of  the  ordinary  day;  they  are  hedged  about  by 
custom,  seclusion,  and  reserve,  in  order  that  they 
shall  publicly  and  privately,  before  men  in  con- 


1 8  AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS 

gregations,  and  among  the  chance  companions  of 
daily  life,  teach  by  precept  and  example  a  belief 
in  holiness. 

In  former  times,  and  even  to-day  by  virtue  of 
inherited  ideas,  the  priesthood  has  been  confined 
to  men,  but  it  has  always  derived  its  strength 
from  the  support  of  celibate  women.  As  Mary 
and  Martha  to  Jesus,  as  St.  Scolastica  to  her 
brother  St.  Benedict,  as  St.  Clare  to  her  brother 
in  the  spirit,  St.  Francis,  so  women  set  apart  from 
the  current  of  corporal  life  have  always  sustained 
and  comforted  the  priest.  The  more  the  course 
of  history  sweeps  the  priesthood  away  from  the 
path  of  its  old  orbit,  the  greater  the  need  that 
ministering  sisters  shall  perform  the  primary  func 
tions  of  the  priest  in  his  stead.  The  dispassionate, 
unprejudiced  celibate  must  keep  alive  the  belief 
in  the  creed  of  holiness.  Churches  and  dogmas 
may  go,  but  the  conceptions  embodied  in  the 
sacraments  remain.  The  entry  into  life  is  a 
solemn  and  sacred  matter:  "La  vie  n'est  ni  un 
plaisir  ni  une  douleur,  c'est  une  affaire  grave  dont 
nous  sommes  charges,  qu'il  faut  conduire  et  termi- 
ner  avec  honneur."  If  this  is  true  —  if  life  is 
neither  for  pleasure  nor  pain,  but  an  affair  of  con 
sequence  that  we  must  carry  on  and  end  with 
honor,  who  is  so  well-fitted  as  the  old  maid  to  teach 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  OLD  MAIDS  19 

the  child  that  his  business  in  life  is  not  worldly 
success,  nor  popular  applause,  nor  achievement 
of  obvious  bulk,  but  to  live  his  life  as  an  affair  of 
honor.  This  is  the  creed  of  the  old  maid.  She 
asserts  the  dogma  of  personal  spiritual  respon 
sibility,  she  proclaims  the  importance  of  the  in 
dividual  in  himself,  though  the  inheritance  of 
propulsion,  of  animal  energy,  which  has  descended 
to  him  from  time  immemorial,  perish  with  him 
forever;  she  rejects  the  doctrine  that  humanity 
as  a  whole  is  the  only  entity  with  a  meaning,  that 
we  are  but  constituent  atoms,  mere  partakers  in  a 
stream  of  physical  life  not  our  own,  links  in  the 
great  procreative  chain  that  binds  the  first  life 
on  earth  with  the  last.  She  is  eminently  the 
priestess  of  spiritual  life,  and  as  such  may  render 
the  noblest  services  to  humanity. 

All  such  services  proceed  from  the  old  maid's 
idealism.  By  the  renunciation  of  the  greatest 
human  desire,  of  the  greatest  human  happiness, 
she  has  obtained  spiritual  freedom;  she  has  not 
misallied  her  soul,  she  has  kept  herself  unspotted 
from  the  world.  This  renunciation,  which  looks 
to  the  vulgar  ridiculous,  to  youth  silly,  to  married 
folks  mistaken  and  melancholy,  is  no  brief  or  easy 
matter;  it  is  a  Purgatory,  and  the  maiden  soul 
that  passes  through  it  becomes  a  gracious  being. 


DE  SENECTUTE 
CATO  MAJOR,  a  man  of  fifty. 
LJELIUS  }  Students  at  Harvard  College. 

CATO  :  Welcome,  Scipio ;  your  father  and  I 
were  friends  before  you  were  born.  And  a  hearty 
welcome  to  you,  too,  Laelius;  all  your  family  I 
esteem  my  kinsmen.  Is  this  the  holiday  season, 
or  how  comes  it  that  you  have  at  this  time  shuffled 
off  the  coil  of  academic  life  ? 

SCIPIO  :  We  have  a  few  free  days  now  according 
to  the  liberal  usage  of  our  college,  and  we  have 
come,  relying  upon  your  kinship  with  Laelius, 
and  your  friendship  for  my  father,  to  ask  you 
some  questions. 

CATO  :  I  had  thought  that  seniors  of  Harvard 
College  were  more  disposed  to  answer  questions 
than  to  ask  them ;  but  I  am  truly  glad  that  you 
have  come,  and  as  best  I  can,  I  will  endeavor  to 
satisfy  your  curiosity. 

L/ELIUS  :  We  have  been  disputing,  sir,  in  the 
interim  between  academic  studies,  as  to  the  value 
of  life ;  whether,  taking  it  all  in  all,  life  should  be 

20 


DE  SENECTUTE  21 

regarded  as  a  good  thing  or  not.  We  are  agreed 
that,  so  far  as  Youth  is  concerned,  life  is  well 
worth  the  living,  but  we  are  doubtful  whether,  if  Old 
Age  be  put  into  the  same  balance  with  Youth,  the 
whole  will  outweigh  the  good  of  never  having  lived. 

SCIPIO  :  You  see  that  we  have  really  come  to 
ask  you  about  Old  Age,  for  as  to  Youth,  that  we 
know  of  ourselves. 

CATO:  About  Old  Age!  Naturally  that  has 
been  the  subject  of  my  meditations,  and  I  will 
gladly  impart  my  conclusions,  such  as  they  are. 

SCIPIO  :  Thank  you  very  much.  I  regret  to 
say  that  we  are  obliged  to  take  the  next  train 
back  to  town,  so  our  time  is  all  too  short. 

CATO  :  We  have  half  an  hour.  I  will  waste 
no  time  in  prologue.  And  I  shall  begin  by  asking 
Scipio's  pardon,  for  I  shall  flatly  contradict  his 
assumption  that  the  young  have  a  knowledge  of 
Youth. 

SCIPIO  :  Of  course  we  beg  you  to  let  neither 
our  youth  nor  our  opinions  hamper  the  free  ex 
pression  of  your  views. 

:   We  are  all  attention,  sir. 


I 

CATO  :    In  the  first  place,  my  young  friends, 
Age  has  one  great  pleasure  which  Youth  (in  spite 


22  DE  SENECTUTE 

of  its  own  rash  assumption  of  knowledge)  does 
not  have,  and  that  is  a  true  appreciation  and 
enjoyment  of  Youth. 

You  who  are  young  know  nothing  of  Youth. 
You  merely  live  it.  You  run,  you  jump,  you 
wrestle,  you  row,  you  play  football,  you  use  your 
muscles,  without  any  consciousness  of  the  won 
derful  machinery  set  in  motion.  You  do  not  per 
ceive  the  beauty  of  Youth,  the  light  in  its  eye,  the 
coming  and  going  of  color  in  its  cheek,  the  ease 
and  grace  of  its  movements.  Nor  do  you  appre 
ciate  the  emotions  of  Youth.  You  are  con 
tented  or  discontented,  merry  or  sad,  hopeful  or 
downcast ;  but  whatever  that  feeling  is,  you  are 
wholly  absorbed  in  it,  you  are  not  able  to  con 
sider  it  objectively,  nor  to  realize  how  marvelous 
and  interesting  are  the  flood  and  ebb  of  youthful 
passion. 

In  fact,  the  young  despise  Youth;  they  are 
impatient  to  hurry  on  and  join  the  ranks  of  that 
more  respectable  and  respected  body,  their  im 
mediate  seniors.  The  toddling  urchin  wishes 
that  he  were  old  enough  to  be  the  interesting 
schoolboy  across  the  way,  who  starts  unwillingly 
to  school ;  the  schoolboy,  as  he  whistles  on  his 
tedious  path,  wishes  that  he  were  a  freshman,  so 
splendid  in  his  knowledge,  his  independence,  his 


DE  SENECTUTE  23 

possessions,  so  familiar  with  strange  oaths,  so 
gloriously  fragrant  of  tobacco.  The  freshman 
would  be  a  sophomore.  You  seniors  wish  to  be 
out  in  the  great  world,  elbowing  your  way  among 
your  fellow  men,  busy  with  what  seem  to  you  the 
realities  of  life.  Youth  feels  that  it  is  always 
standing  outside  the  door  of  a  most  delectable 
future. 

Appreciation  of  Youth  is  part  of  the  domain  of 
art.  There  is  no  virtuoso  like  the  old  man  who 
has  learned  to  see  the  manifold  beauties  of  Youth, 
the  charm  of  motion,  the  grace  of  carriage,  the 
glory  of  innocence,  the  fascination  of  passion. 
The  world  of  art  created  by  the  hand  of  man  has 
nothing  that  can  challenge  comparison  with  the 
masterpieces  of  Youth.  No  man,  in  his  own 
boyhood,  ever  had  as  much  pleasure  from  run 
ning  across  the  lawn  as  he  gets  from  seeing  his 
sons  run  on  that  very  spot;  no  laughter  of  his 
own  was  ever  half  so  sweet  to  his  ears  as  the 
laughter  of  his  little  girl.  No  man  in  his  youth 
ever  understood  the  significance  of  the  saying, 
"Of  such  is  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven."  You  may 
smile  condescendingly,  young  men,  but  in  truth 
the  appreciation  of  Youth  is  a  privilege  and  pos 
session  of  Old  Age. 

LJELIUS  :   I  did  but  smile  in  sympathy. 


24  DE  SENECTUTE 

SCIPIO  :  If  I  understand  you  aright,  Cato, 
Youth  is  a  drama,  in  which  the  actors  are  all 
absorbed  in  their  parts,  while  Age  is  the  audience. 

CATO  :  You  conceive  my  meaning.  The  play 
is  worthy  for  the  gods  to  watch,  —  it  out-Shak- 
speres  Shakspere. 

II 

CATO  :  The  second  great  acquisition  that  comes 
to  Old  Age  is  the  mellowing  and  ripening  of  life. 

As  I  look  back  across  the  years  I  can  see  that 
I  and  my  friends  were  all  what  are  called  in 
dividualists.  We  were  all  absorbed  in  self,  just 
as  you  young  men  are.  We  went  through  our 
romantic  period  in  which  self,  with  a  feather  in 
its  cap  and  a  red  waistcoat,  strutted  over  the 
stage.  It  monopolized  the  theatre;  everybody 
else  —  parents,  brothers,  sisters,  uncles,  aunts, 
cousins,  schoolmates  —  were  supernumeraries, 
whose  business  was  to  look  on  while  the  hero 
recited  his  lines.  With  attention  concentrated 
all  on  self,  the  youth  is  shy  of  all  other  youths, 
of  everybody  whose  insolent  egotism  may  wish  to 
push  its  way  upon  his  stage  and  interrupt  his 
monologue.  The  /  of  Youth  insists  upon  its 
exclusive  right  to  emotion,  upon  its  right  to 
knowledge  of  the  world  at  first-hand,  upon  its 
right  to  repeat  the  follies  of  its  father,  of  its 


DE  SENECTUTE  25 

father's  father,  of  all  its  ancestors.  Youth,  be 
wildered  by  the  excitement  of  self-consciousness, 
can  hardly  see  beyond  the  boundaries  of  self. 

Youth  is  raw  and  suspicious.  It  looks  askance 
at  its  neighbors,  is  indifferent  to  their  lot, 
and  delights  in  solitude,  because  solitude  is 
favorable  to  egotism.  The  young  are  ashamed 
of  their  humanity.  Boys  regard  the  mass  of  boys 
as  if  they  were  of  a  different  species ;  they  fight 
shy  of  any  general  society  among  themselves; 
they  form  cliques.  The  smallest  clique  is  the 
most  honorable.  And  sacredly  enshrined  in  the 
very  centre  of  the  inner  ring  stands  the  Palla 
dium  of  self.  You,  Scipio,  do  not  associate  with 
Gaius  or  Balbus,  though  they  are  the  best  scholars 
in  your  class;  nor  do  you,  Laelius,  frequent  any 
but  the  Claudii.  From  the  vantage-ground,  as 
you  think,  of  exclusiveness,  you  look  down  upon 
your  fellows  herded  in  larger  groups.  You  turn 
up  your  aristocratic  noses  at  the  vulgarity  of  joy 
in  commonalty  spread.  Your  judgments  are 
narrow,  your  prejudices  broad ;  you  are  distrust 
ful  and  conservative;  you  are  wayward  and 
crotchety;  you  are  all  for  precedent,  or  all  for 
license.  You  rejoice  in  foolish  divisions,  your 
country,  your  native  province,  your  college,  your 
club,  your  way  of  doing  things ;  you  despise  all 


26  DE  SENECTUTE 

others,  and  all  their  ways.  A  boy  represents  the 
babyhood  of  the  race;  in  him  is  incarnate  the 
spirit  of  contempt  for  Barbarians. 

Age  is  a  reaction  from  the  restive  individualism 
of  Youth.  It  recognizes  the  human  inability  to 
stand  alone ;  it  perceives  that  the  individual  is  a 
bit  broken  from  the  human  mass,  that  our  ragged 
edges  still  maintain  the  pattern  of  the  break,  and 
are  ready  to  fit  into  the  general  mass  again. 
The  old  man  no  longer  dwells  on  the  differences 
between  one  human  creature  and  his  fellows;  he 
reflects  upon  their  common  qualities.  He  finds 
no  solace  in  isolation ;  he  rejoices  in  community. 
Youth  is  supremely  conscious  of  its  own  sensitive 
ness,  its  own  palate,  its  own  comfort,  it  is  full  of 
individual  appetite  and  greed;  but  Age  is  con 
scious  of  humanity,  of  a  universal  sensitiveness, 
of  palates  untouched  by  delicacies,  of  bodies  un- 
cared  for,  of  souls  uncomforted,  and  its  queasy 
stomach  cannot  bear  to  be  helped  tenfold,  a 
hundredfold,  a  thousandfold,  while  fellow  mem 
bers  of  the  indivisible  body  human  sicken  from 
want. 

Age  perceives  a  thousand  bonds  where  Youth 
sees  discord.  Age  sets  store  by  the  common  good 
of  life,  it  conceives  of  our  common  humanity  as 
the  mere  right  to  share,  and  of  pleasure  as  shar- 


DE  SENECTUTE  27 

ing;  it  considers  humanity  partly  as  an  enlarge 
ment  of  self,  partly  as  a  refuge  from  self;  it 
lightly  passes  over  the  differences  of  speech,  of 
accent,  of  clothes,  of  ways  and  customs,  which  to 
boys  like  you,  taken  with  the  outward  aspect  of 
the  world,  seem  to  erect  such  insuperable  barriers 
between  them  and  their  fellows.  To  Old  Age 
the  sutures  of  humanity,  that  to  the  youthful 
eye  gape  so  wide,  are  all  grown  together,  the 
several  parts  are  merged  into  one  whole. 

Of  all  pleasures,  none  is  so  satisfying  as  the 
full  enjoyment  of  our  common  humanity.  It 
loosens  the  swaddling  clothes  that  wrap  us  round ; 
it  alone  gives  us  freedom.  No  doubt  this  is 
partly  due  to  the  nearer  approach  of  death ;  the 
chill  of  night  causes  the  pilgrim  to  draw  nearer 
his  fellows  and  warm  himself  at  the  kindly 
warmth  of  human  fellowship.  But  be  the  cause 
what  it  may,  the  enjoyment  of  humanity  is  a 
taste  that  grows  with  man's  growth ;  it  is  a  part 
of  the  ripening  of  life,  and  comes  quickest  to  those 
who  ripen  in  the  sun  of  happiness. 

There  is  another  element  in  this  process  of 
mellowing  with  age.  Old  Age  is  intensely  aware 
of  the  delicacy  of  this  human  instrument,  on 
which  fate  can  play  all  stops  of  joy  and  pain ;  it 
feels  an  infinite  concern  before  the  vast  sum  of 


28  DE  SENECTUTE 

human  sentience;  it  sees  in  humanity  the  harvest 
of  all  the  tillage  of  the  past ;  it  ponders  over  the 
long  stretch  of  toil,  cruelty,  suffering,  bewilder 
ment,  and  terror,  of  unnumbered  generations. 
All  along  its  path  life  flickers  up  but  to  be 
quenched  by  death.  In  contemplation  of  this 
funeral  march  the  old  man  nuzzles  to  the  breast 
of  humanity,  and  longs  for  more  and  more  inti 
mate  human  communion.  To  him  humanity  is 
not  a  mere  collection  of  individual  units,  but  a 
mighty  organism,  animated  by  a  common  con 
sciousness,  proceeding  onward  to  some  far-ofF  end, 
with  whose  destiny  his  own  is  inseparably  joined. 

Ill 

L^LIUS  :  What  do  you  say  to  the  physical 
weakness  of  Old  Age  ?  Surely  the  lack  of  phys 
ical  vigor  is  a  disadvantage. 

CATO  :  It  is  true,  Laelius,  that  Old  Age  fences 
in  a  man's  activities.  We  old  men  are  no  longer 
free  to  roam  and  amuse,  or  bore,  ourselves  with 
random  interests.  Our  bounds  are  set.  But  with 
the  diminishing  of  space  comes  what  may  well 
be  a  more  than  corresponding  intensity  of  in 
terest.  The  need  of  boundlessness  is  one  of  the 
illusions  of  youth ;  it  is  a  consequence  of  youth's 
instability,  of  its  unwillingness  to  hold  its  atten- 


DE  SENECTUTE  29 

tion  fixed.  The  tether  of  Old  Age  obliges  us  to 
fix  our  attention ;  and  no  matter  on  what  our 
attention  is  set,  we  can  find  there  concentrated 
the  essential  truths  of  the  universe.  The  adjec 
tives  great  and  small  are  not  God's  words;  they 
mark  our  inability  to  throw  aside  our  egoism 
even  for  a  moment. 

The  Japanese  general  who  has  slain  his  tens 
of  thousands  on  the  plains  of  Manchuria,  squats 
on  his  hams  and  contemplates  the  infinite  beauties 
in  the  iris,  as  the  sunshine  flatters  it,  or  the  breeze 
bellies  out  the  wrinkled  petals  of  its  corolla.  Its 
purple  deepens,  its  white  emulates  the  radiance 
of  morning,  its  velvet  texture  outdoes  the  royal 
couch  of  fairyland,  its  pistil  displays  all  the 
marvel  of  maternity,  its  laborious  root  performs 
its  appointed  task  with  the  faithfulness  of  minis 
tering  angels.  The  armies  of  Russia  and  Japan 
could  not  tell  as  much  concerning  the  history  of 
the  universe  as  does  this  solitary  iris.  A  garden 
that  will  hold  a  lilac  bush,  a  patch  of  mignonette, 
a  dozen  hollyhocks,  or  a  few  peonies,  is  enough 
to  occupy  a  Diocletian.  A  square  yard  of  vetch 
will  reveal  the  most  profound  secrets  of  our 
destiny ;  the  fermentation  of  a  cup  of  wine  dis 
closes  enough  to  make  a  man  famous  for  cen 
turies;  the  disease  of  a  silkworm  will  determine 


30  DE  SENECTUTE 

the  well-being  of  a  kingdom;  the  denizens  in  a 
drop  of  blood  cause  half  the  sufferings  of  hu 
manity.  The  achievements  of  modern  science 
merely  confirm  the  intuitions  of  Old  Age.  Little 
ness  is  as  full  of  interest  as  bigness. 

Youth  has  a  longing  for  Sinai  heights,  for  the 
virgin  tops  of  the  Himalayas,  and  the  company 
of  deep-breathing  mountaineers ;  this  is  because 
he  cannot  see  the  wonder  in  common  things. 
Blindly  impatient  with  what  he  has,  blindly  dis 
contented  with  what  is  about  him,  he  postulates 
the  beautiful,  the  real,  the  true,  in  the  unattain 
able.  But  Old  Age  delights  in  what  is  near  at 
hand,  it  sees  that  nothing  is  cut  off  from  the 
poetry  of  the  universe,  that  the  littlest  things 
throb  with  the  same  spirit  that  animates  our 
hearts,  that  the  word  common  is  a  mere  subter 
fuge  of  ignorance. 

L^LIUS  :  If  I  conceive  your  meaning  aright, 
Cato,  Old  Age  is,  through  greater  understanding, 
nearer  the  truth  than  Youth. 

CATO  :  Yes,  Age  understands  that  such  reve 
lation  as  may  be  vouchsafed  to  man  concerning 
the  working  of  the  will  of  the  Gods  needs  not  be 
sought  on  Olympus,  but  in  whatever  spot  man  is. 
Earth,  the  waters,  the  air,  and  all  the  starry 
space,  are  waiting  to  communicate  the  secrets  of 


DE  SENECTUTE  31 

the  Gods  to  the  understanding  of  man.  Many 
secrets  they  will  reveal;  and  many,  perhaps, 
they  will  never  disclose. 

IV 

SCIPIO  :  Excuse  me,  Cato,  but  are  you  not,  in 
substance,  claiming  the  advantages  of  religion,  and 
is  not  religion  as  open  to  Youth  as  to  Old  Age  ? 

CATO  :  By  no  means,  Scipio ;  Old  Age  is 
more  religious  than  Youth.  I  do  not  speak  of 
the  emotional  crises  that  come  upon  young  men 
and  young  women  in  early  youth;  those  crises 
seem  too  closely  related  to  physical  growth  and 
development  to  be  religious  in  the  same  sense  in 
which  Old  Age  is  religious.  That  the  emotional 
crises  of  Youth  may  bear  as  truthful  witness  to 
the  realities  of  the  universe  as  the  temperate 
religion  of  Old  Age,  I  do  not  deny.  The  God 
that  Youth  sees  by  the  light  of  its  emotional  fires 
may  be  the  real  God,  but  that  image  of  God  is 
transitory,  it  appears  in  fire  and  too  often  dis 
appears  in  smoke.  The  image  of  God  that  ap 
pears  to  Old  Age  is  a  more  abiding  image;  it 
reveals  itself  to  experience  and  to  reason  instead 
of  to  the  sudden  and  brief  conviction  of  vision. 
Old  Age  finds  God  more  in  its  own  image,  calm, 
infinitely  patient,  not  revealed  merely  by  the 


32  DE  SENECTUTE 

vibrant  intensity  of  passion,  but  in  the  familiar 
and  the  commonplace.  To  Old  Age  the  com 
mon  things  of  life  declare  the  glory  of  God. 

Common  things  affect  different  minds  dif 
ferently;  yet  to  most  minds  certain  familiar 
phenomena  stand  out  conspicuous  as  matter  for 
reflection.  Most  extraordinary  of  all  common 
things  is  human  love.  Throughout  the  universe 
of  the  stellar  sky  and  the  universe  of  the  infinitely 
little,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  there  is  perpetual 
movement,  change,  readjustment;  and,  except 
for  our  animal  life,  the  whole  machinery  whirls 
along  without  a  throb  of  emotion,  without  a 
touch  of  affection.  Why  should  not  men  have 
been  mechanical,  swept  into  being  and  borne 
onward,  by  the  same  energies,  in  the  same  iron- 
bound  way  ?  Even  if  consciousness,  unfolding  out 
of  the  potential  chaos  that  preceded  man,  was  able 
to  wheedle  an  existence  from  Necessity,  why  was 
it  expedient  to  add  love  ?  Would  not  mechanical 
means  serve  the  determined  ends  of  human  life, 
and  impel  us  to  this  action  and  to  that,  without 
the  need  of  human  affection  ?  Human  affection 
is  surely  a  very  curious  and  interesting  device. 

And  if  the  world  must  be  peopled,  and  the 
brute  law  of  propagation  be  adopted  in  a  uni 
verse  of  chemistry  and  physics,  why  was  it  neces- 


DE  SENECTUTE 


33 


sary  to  cover  it  with  visions  of  "  love  and  of  honor 
that  cannot  die,"  and  to  render  the  common  man 
for  the  moment  worthy  of  an  infinite  destiny  ? 

Then  there  is  also  the  perplexity  of  beauty. 
Why  to  creatures  whose  every  footstep  is  deter 
mined  by  the  propulsions  of  the  past,  should  a 
flower,  a  tuft  of  grass,  a  passing  cloud,  a  bare  tree 
that  lifts  the  tracery  of  its  branches  against  a  sun 
set  sky,  cause  such  delight  ?  Descended  from  an 
ancestry  that  needed  no  lure  of  beautiful  sight 
or  of  pleasant  sound  to  induce  it  to  live  its  ap 
pointed  life,  why  should  mankind  become  so 
capriciously  sensitive  ? 

Or  consider  human  happiness.  Here,  for  ex 
ample,  I  live,  in  this  little  cottage  that  seems  to 
have  alighted,  like  a  bird,  on  the  slope  of  this 
gentle  hill.  Red  and  white  peonies  grow  before 
the  door,  enriching  the  air  with  their  fragrance. 
They  charm  both  me  and  the  bees.  In  yonder 
bush  beside  the  door  a  chipping-sparrow  sits 
upon  her  nest ;  and  in  the  swinging  branch  of  the 
elm  tree  overhead  two  orioles  rear  their  brood, 
and  as  they  flash  by,  their  golden  colors  delight 
the  human  beings  that  watch  them.  Look  over 
that  stone  wall,  and  mark  how  its  flat  line  gives 
an  incomparable  effect  to  the  landscape.  See  our 
New  England  fields  dotted  with  New  England 


34  DE  SENECTUTE 

elms;  and  far  beyond  see  those  white-sailed 
schooners  scud  before  the  boisterous  wind.  The 
farmer's  boy,  who  fetches  milk  and  eggs,  left  me 
that  nosegay  of  wild  flowers.  Look !  Look ! 
See  how  the  whiteness  of  that  cloud  glorifies 
the  blue  of  the  sky.  Is  it  not  strange  that 
all  these  things,  that  go  about  their  own  bus 
iness,  should,  by  the  way,  perform  a  work  of 
supererogation  and  give  us  so  much  unnecessary 
pleasure  ? 

The  young  do  not  see  or  do  not  heed  these  com 
mon  things ;  they  are  busy  with  their  own  emotions. 
Youth  is  a  time  of  tyrannical  demands  upon  the 
universe.  It  expects  a  perpetual  banquet  of 
happiness,  and  at  the  first  disillusion  charges  the 
universe  with  falsehood  and  ingratitude.  It  no 
sooner  discovers  that  all  creation  is  not  hurrying 
to  gratify  its  impulses,  than  it  cries  out  that  all 
creation  is  a  hideous  thing.  It  arraigns  the  uni 
verse;  it  draws  up  an  indictment  of  countless 
crimes.  The  long  past  becomes  one  bloody 
tragedy.  Dragons  of  the  prime  rend  one  an 
other,  creature  preys  upon  creature,  all  things 
live  at  the  expense  of  others,  and  death  is  the 
one  reality.  All  the  records  of  the  earth  tell  a 
tale  of  bloody,  bestial  cruelty.  The  globe  is 
growing  cold;  man  shall  perish  utterly,  all  his 


DE  SENECTUTE  35 

high  hopes,  all  his  good  deeds,  all  his  prayers, 
all  hts  love,  shall  become  as  if  they  had  never 
been.  And  Youth,  because  the  universe  for  a 
moment  seems  to  neglect  it,  in  a  Promethean 
ecstasy  defies  the  powers  that  be. 

But  Old  Age,  rendered  wiser  by  the  mellow 
ing  years,  concerns  itself  less  with  the  records  of 
palaeontology  and  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  uni 
verse,  than  with  matters  at  closer  range  and 
more  within  its  comprehension.  It  fixes  its  eye 
less  on  death  than  on  life.  It  considers  the  phe 
nomena  of  love,  of  beauty,  of  happiness,  and  the 
factors  that  have  wrought  them,  and  its  thoughts 
trace  back  the  long,  long  sequence  of  causes  that 
lie  behind  each  contributing  factor;  they  follow 
them  back  through  recorded  time,  back  through 
the  ages  of  primitive  man,  through  the  dim 
times  of  the  first  stirrings  of  organic  life,  through 
vast  geological  periods,  back  to  chaos  and  old 
night.  They  follow  each  contributory  factor  out 
through  the  universe,  to  the  uttermost  reaches 
of  space,  beyond  the  boundaries  of  perception ; 
and  everywhere  they  find  those  contributory 
causes  steadily  proceeding  on  their  several  ways 
through  the  vast  stretches  of  space  and  time,  and 
combining  with  other  factors  from  other  dark 
recesses  of  the  unknown,  in  order,  at  last,  to  pro- 


36  DE  SENECTUTE 

duce  love,  beauty,  happiness,  for  such  as  you 
and  me.  Consider,  you  young  men,  who  pass 
these  miracles  by  as  lightly  as  you  breathe,  this 
marvellous  privilege  of  life,  the  infinite  toil  and 
patience  that  has  made  it  what  it  is,  and  then,  if 
you  dare,  call  the  power  that  animates  the  uni 
verse  cruel. 

V 

SCIPIO  :  I  perceive,  Cato,  that  you  believe  in  a 
God,  a  God  in  sympathy  with  man,  and  I  grant 
—  Laelius,  too,  will  grant  —  that  such  a  belief,  if 
a  characteristic  of  Old  Age,  does  indeed  give  Old 
Age  one  great  advantage  over  Youth. 

CATO  :  No,  I  cannot  claim  that  a  belief  in  God 
is  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  Old  Age,  but  I 
think  that  Old  Age  is  far  more  likely  than  Youth 
to  dwell  upon  the  considerations  that  fit  in  with 
such  a  belief. 

To  Youth  all  the  energy  of  the  universe  is  in 
explicable,  the  things  we  behold  are  the  products 
of  blind  forces ;  but  to  Old  Age  the  essential  ele 
ment  in  the  universe  is  the  potential  character  of 
its  infinitely  little  constituent  parts.  Out  of  the 
dust  came  the  human  eye,  up  from  the  happy 
combination  of  the  nervous  system  came  the 
human  mind,  and  with  the  passage  of  time  has 
come  the  new  organic  whole,  humanity.  Do  not 


DE  SENECTUTE  37 

these  phenomena  hint  at  a  divine  element  in  the 
potential  energies  of  the  universe  ?  What  is  all 
this  motion  and  turmoil,  all  the  ceaseless  turn 
ings  and  tossings  of  creation,  but  restless  dis 
content  and  an  endeavor  to  produce  a  higher 
order  ?  Our  human  love,  beauty,  and  happiness 
are  less  to  be  explained  by  what  has  gone  before 
than  by  what  is  to  come.  You  cannot  explain  the 
first  streaks  of  dawn  by  the  darkness  of  the  night. 
All  the  processes  of  change  —  gases,  vapors, 
germs,  human  souls  —  are  the  perturbations  of 
aspiration.  This  vibrant  universe  is  struggling 
in  the  throes  of  birth.  As  out  of  the  dust  has 
come  the  human  soul,  so  out  of  the  universe  shall 
come  a  divine  soul.  God  is  to  be  the  last  fruits 
of  creation.  Out  of  chaos  He  is  evolving. 

You  would  laugh  at  me,  Scipio,  if  it  were  not 
for  your  good  manners.  Wait  and  learn.  Belief 
in  deity  is,  in  a  measure,  the  privilege  of  us  old 
men.  Age  has  lost  the  physical  powers  of  Youth, 
and  no  one  will  dispute  that  the  loss  is  great,  but 
that  loss  predisposes  men  to  the  acceptance  of 
religious  beliefs.  Physical  powers,  of  themselves, 
imply  an  excessive  belief  in  the  physical  universe ; 
muscles  and  nerves,  in  contact  with  unyielding 
things,  exaggerate  the  importance  of  the  physical 
world.  Throughout  the  period  of  physical  vigor 


38  DE  SENECTUTE 

the  material  world  is  a  matter  of  prime  conse 
quence;  but  to  an  old  man  the  physical  world 
loses  its  tyrannical  authority.  The  world  of 
thought  and  the  world  of  affection  rise  up  and 
surpass  in  interest  the  physical  world.  In  these 
worlds  the  presence  of  God  is  more  clearly  dis 
cernible  than  in  the  material  world ;  but  if  He 
is  in  them,  He  will  surely  come  into  the  material 
world. 

Even  now,  here  and  there,  His  glory  is  visible. 
A  mother,  at  least,  cannot  believe  that  the  throbs 
of  her  heart  over  her  sick  child  are  of  no  greater 
significance  than  the  dropping  of  water  or  the 
formation  of  a  crystal.  The  presence  of  deity 
has  reached  her  heart ;  in  course  of  time,  it  will 
also  reach  the  water  and  the  crystal.  If  matter 
of  itself  has  produced  the  passion  of  human  love, 
it  surely  may  be  said,  without  presumption,  to  be 
charged  with  potential  divinity. 

Old  Age  cares  less  and  less  for  the  physical 
world ;  it  lives  more  and  more  in  the  worlds  of 
thought  and  of  affection.  It  does  not  envy 
Youth,  that  lives  so  bound  and  confined  by 
things  physical.  But  you  have  been  very  patient. 
Make  my  compliments  to  your  families,  and  per 
haps  in  part  to  Harvard  College,  on  your  good 
manners,  and  remember  when  you,  too,  shall  be 


DE  SENECTUTE  39 

old,  to  have  the  same  gentle  patience  with  Youth 
that  you  now  have  with  Old  Age. 

SCIPIO  :  Thank  you,  Cato.  If  we  are  not  con 
vinced,  we  desire  to  be. 

L^ELIUS  :  Yes,  indeed,  we  now  doubt  that  those 
whom  the  Gods  love  die  young. 

CATO  :  You  must  hurry  or  you  will  miss  your 
train.  Good-bye. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE   PAST 

I 

THE  religion  of  the  future  is  occupying  men's 
minds.  They  are  right  to  think  of  it,  to  talk  of  it, 
and  hope  for  it;  their  leaders,  as  leaders  toward 
the  new  have  always  been,  are  men  of  the  pioneer 
sort,  animated  by  a  need  of  room,  eager  to  avoid 
and  escape  from  the  restraining  bounds,  the 
narrow  quarters,  in  which  the  old  centuries  have 
lodged  us.  They  are  brave;  they  set  their  faces 
toward  the  new,  and  feel  the  fresh  salt  breezes  of 
the  unknown  sea  blow  full  in  front.  Their  cour 
age  is  none  the  less  praiseworthy  because  at  times 
it  seems  to  shine  the  more  from  contrast  with  the 
dull  hues  of  a  sicklier  liver;  nor  is  their  self-re 
liance  less  to  be  admired  because  it  is  quickened 
by  a  knowledge  of  the  self-helplessness  of  others. 
They  are  leaders;  their  business  is  to  lead,  and 
one  of  their  duties  is  to  prod  the  laggards  and  the 
stay-at-homes.  They  have  so  much  right  upon 
their  side,  that  they  may  well  be  excused  for 
thinking  they  have  it  all. 
40 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST  41 

The  need  of  change,  of  cutting  away  old,  time- 
eaten  parts  of  religion,  of  replacing  that  which  is 
cut  away  by  modern  notions,  of  substituting 
dogmas  that  will  stand  the  hammers  of  logic  and 
science  for  those  that  dissolve  impalpable  before 
a  child's  knowledge  of  physics  and  history,  is  and 
may  well  be  ample  justification  for  a  wide  sweep 
of  the  pioneer  axe.  They,  however,  by  the  very 
thoroughness  of  their  devastation,  force  the  issue 
of  the  value  of  this  thoroughness.  Their  trenchant 
ploughshares  uncover  our  holes  and  crevices, 
and  stir  the  dispossessed  "wee,  sleekit,  cowrin', 
tim'rous"  acceptors  of  old  ideas  into  an  attitude 
of  asking  for  further  proof  of  this  light-hearted 
confidence  in  the  new.  Is  there  not  some  small 
remnant  of  religious  use  left  in  the  old  home  ? 
Have  the  emigrants  got  it  all  stowed  away  in  their 
lockers  ? 

For  if,  by  this  uncompromising  thoroughness, 
they  raise  a  comparison  between  themselves 
and  us,  if  they  vaunt  their  riches  in  contrast 
to  our  poverty,  they  must  be  scrupulous  to 
measure,  and  set  apart,  the  things  that  are 
theirs  on  one  side  and  the  things  that  are  ours 
on  the  other.  There  must  be  no  confusion. 
The  produce  of  the  new  land  whither  they  go 
is  theirs;  the  produce  of  the  old  home  and  its 


42  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

garden  belongs  to  us.     Let  us  divide  clearly  and 
mark  the  division. 

The  new  religion  has  a  "god";  but  at  the  very 
outset  we  may  ask,  What  right  have  they  to  take 
our  name  ?  How  can  they  strip  that  name  of  a 
hundred  associations  that  come  thronging,  — 
the  belief  of  good  men,  the  hopes  of  the  unhappy, 
the  trust  of  the  valiant,  the  passion  of  those  who 
set  their  hearts  upon  the  things  that  are  not  of  this 
world?  What  is  their  "god"?  They  feel  the 
pulse  and  throb  of  countless  forces,  they  feel  their 
sensibilities  played  upon,  their  consciousness 
awake  and  receptive,  their  fires  of  life  fed  with 
fuel;  they  assert  that  all  these  unknown  com 
motions,  these  stirrings,  waves,  fluctuations, 
movements,  are  the  results  of  contact  with  in 
numerable  manifestations  of  one  primal  force, 
and  they  say  he  is  their  god.  But  this  very  zeal 
for  unification,  for  oneness,  for  an  all-embracing 
whole,  is  of  our  creation ;  we  of  the  past  have 
created  that.  They  of  the  future  have  only  a 
vast  aggregate  of  like  elements,  if  even  they  have 
that.  They  combine  and  mould  together  in  one 
form  these  inorganic,  intolerant  forces,  and  then 
they  wrap  this  moulded  image  up  in  our  emotions, 
in  the  reverence  and  awe  that  we  of  the  old  home 
have  made.  Reverence,  awe,  love,  are  the  mak- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST  43 

ings  of  the  past,  the  handiwork  of  ignorance,  of 
superstition,  of  belief,  of  faith ;  they  are  ours  to 
deck  our  altars  and  our  idols. 

The  "god"  of  the  future  is  but  a  concatenated 
aggregate  of  unknown  forces,  and  both  aggrega 
tion  and  concatenation  are  assumptions.  They 
claim  reverence  for  the  reign  of  law,  with  its  uni 
form  and  measured  impartiality,  in  place  of  the 
arbitrary  and  tyrannical  actions  of  a  jealous  God  ; 
but  they  have  no  right  to  reverence.  Even  if 
they  will  kneel  to  the  downward  fall  of  an  apple, 
and  the  elliptical  orbits  of  the  planets,  even  if  they 
will  sing  hymns  to  the  swell  and  ebb  of  the  tide, 
and  praise  the  union  of  hydrogen  and  oxygen,  they 
have  no  right  to  take  our  words,  our  associations, 
our  frippery  of  old  thoughts  and  emotions.  Un 
less  they  are  prepared  to  bestow  an  adequate 
allotment  of  ecstasy  on  each  electric  volt,  they 
have  no  right  to  clap  all  the  volts  together  in  one 
symbolic  whole  and  bow  down  before  them.  The 
only  rational  attitude  toward  the  "god"  of  the 
future  is  distrust.  That  god  must  be  utterly 
dehumanized  and  given  its  due,  no  more,  no  less. 
"It"  should  inspire  such  amazement  and  respect 
as  generalizations  of  the  human  mind,  made  in  the 
laboratory  or  the  lecture-room,  are  entitled  to. 
"It"  must  be  charged  with  whatever  sin  and 


44  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

suffering,  whatever  pain  and  distress,  there  may 
be  throughout  the  universe.  "It"  may  well  be 
feared  by  the  timid  and  should  be  defied  by  the 
bold.  "It"  cannot  attach  to  itself  any  of  the 
emotions  that  the  religion  of  the  past  has  called 
into  being.  We  are  men,  and  the  relation  of  hu 
manity  toward  the  universal  forces  is  one  of 
enmity.  We  must  conquer  or  die.  We  must 
outwit  them,  control  them,  counteract  them,  or 
they  will  beat  us  down  under  their  feet.  There 
is  no  evidence  of  any  friendliness  toward  us ;  those 
forces,  for  which  the  reign  of  law  is  emotionally 
claimed,  will  destroy  us  according  to  their  laws 
unless  we  can  control  them.  We  are  human,  they 
are  non-human ;  this  is  all  we  know. 

In  this  respect  the  reformers  have  taken  from 
our  stock  what  belongs  to  us ;  but  by  their  own 
doctrine  they  may  not  take  a  word,  —  the  word 
of  words,  —  transfer  it  to  their  stock,  and  then 
pretend  that  they  have  taken  a  mere  term  of 
dialectics,  as  if  they  could  leave  behind  the  con 
notation  which  is  its  essence,  and  strip  off  all 
vestiges  of  those  yearnings  which  semper,  ubique 
et  ab  omnibus  have  given  the  word  god  all  its 
significance.  Then  on  this  borrowed  word  they 
seek  to  build  the  religion  of  the  future. 

What  attribute  of  religion  can  they  hang  upon 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST  45 

it,  they  who  have  cut  themselves  loose  from  all  the 
network  of  affection  that  man's  history  has 
woven  about  the  God  of  the  past  ?  They  cannot 
take  duty.  Their  god  has  nothing  in  common 
with  duty;  the  two  conceptions  are  antagonistic. 
Their  god  acts  on  motives  that  we  can  neither 
know  nor  conjecture;  this  present  manifestation 
of  contemporaneous  phenomena  that  we  call  our 
universe  comes  from  we  know  not  where,  and  goes 
we  know  not  whither.  All  is  dark.  But  duty  is 
plain  and  readily  understood.  Duty  is  a  human 
conception,  a  means  for  human  good,  a  human 
contrivance  in  the  long  war  of  humanity  against 
the  forces  of  evil  that  encompass  us  on  every  side. 
Good  is  that  which  is  good  to  humanity;  evil  is 
that  which  is  evil  to  it.  The  unconscious  forces 
that  nourish  germs  of  disease,  that  rob  us  of  health, 
of  happiness,  of  life,  that  cause  untoward  heat  and 
cruel  cold,  that  "hurl  the  lightnings  and  that  wing 
the  storms,"  that  create  venomous  reptiles  and 
poison-bearing  insects,  that  cool  the  old  earth  and 
threaten  our  race  with  a  miserable  end,  are  to  our 
human  desires  wholly  evil.  They  are  all  law- 
abiding,  and  in  them  as  well  as  in  us  lies  a  portion 
of  the  dignity  of  the  universe ;  and  yet  we  hate 
them.  Our  duties  are  toward  our  parents  and 
children,  toward  our  wives  and  husbands,  toward 


46  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

our  fellow  townsfolk,  toward  such  as  chance  may 
render  our  neighbors,  toward  our  horses  and  our 
dogs.  Out  of  earthly  relations  our  duties  are 
begotten  ;  but  out  of  what  shall  we  create  a  notion 
of  duty  toward  this  "god,"  or  how  shall  we, 
except  by  making  ourselves  mere  fate-led  puppets, 
identify  duty  with  its  will  ?  Our  human  duties, 
our  sense  of  solidarity,  our  consciousness  of  com 
mon  joys  and  sorrows,  are  not  affirmations  of  this 
new  "god,"  but  a  denial  of  it.  If  we  shall  awake, 
as  the  reformers  say  we  shall,  to  a  keener  apprecia 
tion  of  the  need  of  standing  by  one  another,  of 
working  together,  it  will  be  because  we  perceive 
that  we  are  alone,  unaided,  sailing  in  one  great 
ship  over  an  unknown  sea.  The  sense  of  human 
duty  may  grow  stronger  as  we  shall  cease  to  rely 
on  outside  help,  we  may  become  more  self-reliant 
under  the  new  gospel;  but  self-reliance  is  not 
religion. 

ii 

The  religion  of  the  past  is  of  a  different  order. 
It  was  born  of  ignorance  and  superstition,  nursed 
by  credulity  and  need,  fostered  and  tended  by  evil 
times,  by  misery,  disappointment,  fear,  and  death. 
Nothing  could  be  further  from  a  rational  and 
scientific  explanation  of  this  extraordinary  phe 
nomenon,  life,  than  the  God  of  old.  He  grew  with 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST  47 

the  growth  of  our  race,  he  acquired  attributes  as 
we  progressed,  he  gradually  became  high,  holy, 
and  loving;  and,  when,  in  our  deeper  need  to 
feel  communion  with  Him,  He  put  on  human  shape 
and  shared  our  common  human  experiences,  man 
loved  Him  passionately.  He  is  the  creation  of 
many  great  hearts ;  and  because  humanity  has 
made  Him,  we  love  Him.  Humanity  has  loved 
its  beautiful  creation ;  and,  rounding  out  the 
allegory,  created  a  human  mother  for  its  offspring. 
We  feel  our  weakness,  our  ignorance,  our  incapac 
ity  to  stand  alone,  and  we  cling  to  that  which  we 
have  created. 

Yet  because  we  can  see  no  further  than  our  own 
handiwork,  because  we  seem  to  have  been  creating 
something  out  of  nothing,  is  it  necessarily  so  ? 
And  if  it  is  so,  was  the  handiwork  a  waste  of  labor 
and  of  love  ?  Is  the  image  of  a  loving  God  with  a 
human  heart,  botched  and  marred  though  it  is  by 
the  glosses  of  churchmen,  necessarily  an  unservice 
able  illusion  ?  How  are  we  to  know  that  it  is  an 
illusion  ?  What  is  this  world  ?  What  are  illu 
sions,  what  is  the  line  that  divides  them  from  other 
impressions,  and  are  not  illusions  as  worth  while 
as  other  things  ?  Are  they  not  oddly  like  reality, 
and  have  they  not  their  special  uses  ?  What  is 
our  conscious  life,  but  a  storehouse  of  illusions, 


48  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

and  what  are  our  senses  but  mechanical  doors  to 
let  more  illusions  in  ?  Why  should  we  not,  for  our 
comfort,  our  well-being,  our  ennoblement,  create 
one  illusion  the  more  ? 

Or  ought  not  our  old  religion  to  be  called  a  work 
of  art  rather  than  a  cluster  of  illusions  ?  Is  it 
not  the  incomparable  work  of  the  imagination, 
upon  which,  as  upon  speech,  all  men  have  been 
at  work  ?  Here  and  there,  indeed,  great  men 
have  altered  the  design,  remodelling  sometimes 
the  fundamental  plan;  while  all  the  time,  here 
and  there,  according  to  their  personal  tastes  and 
capacities,  the  mass  of  believers  have  been  adding 
touches :  filling  in  the  background,  heightening 
the  color,  strengthening  a  line,  or  deepening  a 
shadow.  Is  not  this  work  of  art  a  beautiful  thing 
in  itself,  with  all  its  rudeness  and  crudity;  and  is 
it  not  so  entwined  and  entangled  with  the  history 
of  the  human  race  that  any  divorce  between  them 
must  be  a  maim  ? 

They  may  prove  without  any  great  fear  of 
opposition  that  the  tribal  god  was  a  barbarous  con 
ception,  that  a  national  god  is  at  times  an  irrational 
and  mischievous  hinderance  to  the  progress  of  civ 
ilization.  But  why  not  proceed,  as  nature  does, 
from  seed  to  shoot,  from  shoot  to  stalk,  from  stalk 
to  trunk,  drinking  in  from  sunshine  and  rain  new 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST  49 

properties  and  powers,  till  the  climber  climbing 
to  its  topmost  bough  sees  ever  further  and  further  ? 
If  we  have  grown,  the  tribal  god  has  aided  our 
growth.  In  the  home,  in  the  school,  in  the 
counting-room,  in  the  court-house,  on  the  battle 
field,  or  in  the  penitential  cell,  he  or  his  successors 
have  helped  men  and  women,  boys  and  girls, 
to  fight  the  good  fight.  When  Israel  conquered 
Moab,  when  Greece  defeated  Persia,  when  con 
federate  Europe  beat  back  the  Huns,  when  a 
high-aspiring  soul  has  turned  away  from  tempta 
tion,  were  not  these  victories  touched  at  least  with 
the  glory  of  divine  achievement  ?  It  is  important 
for  the  right  to  prevail,  even  if  in  the  doubtful 
balance  the  right  leans  to  one  side  only  by  the 
least  fraction  of  a  scruple.  Whenever  the  side 
impregnated  with  a  greater  degree  of  high  purpose 
and  aspiring  will  has  overcome  the  other,  that  has 
been  a  victory  for  the  divine  cause.  Whenever 
a  man  has  sacrificed  himself  or  what  he  loved  most, 
in  obedience  to  the  command  of  what  he  held 
holy,  whenever  he  has  renounced  the  easy  pleasure 
for  the  hard  denial,  whenever  the  little  per 
sistent  instincts  of  sympathy  and  human  fellow 
ship  have  triumphed  over  his  passions,  there  the 
tribal  god,  the  national  god,  the  sectararian  god, 
or  the  human  god,  has  been  by  his  side,  helping 


50  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

sustaining,  encouraging.  Wherever  men  have  felt 
that  the  issues  before  them  were  fraught  with 
a  significance  greater  than  the  balance  and  adjust 
ment  of  appetite  and  expedience,  there  one  of  the 
old  gods  was  at  work.  The  God  of  the  past  was 
human.  He  cared  for  men,  their  tears,  their  en 
deavors,  their  love,  their  obedience ;  but  the  god  of 
the  future  is  to  have  no  human  sympathies.  From 
now  on,  man  is  not  to  rely  on  God  but  on  himself, 
and  we  are  now  to  watch  the  deceitful  vapors, 
that  have  set  themselves  together  in  the  shape  of 
walls,  bastions,  ramparts,  and  bannered  citadel, 
dissolve  in  the  white  light  of  disillusion.  The 
real  and  the  non-real  must  be  set  sharply  apart. 

The  old  religion  had  a  mass  of  additions,  accre 
tions,  agglutinations,  gathered  to  it  as  it  rolled 
along  the  path  of  history.  These  were  unjustifi 
able  in  any  logical  system  of  theology ;  but  why 
should  we  adopt  a  manner  of  judgment  that  judges 
according  to  origins  ?  Why  should  we  not  judge 
according  to  results  ?  That  has  been  an  old  habit 
of  mankind.  When  men  felt  a  relief,  an  enlarge 
ment,  a  revival,  a  more  potent  energy,  a  new  and 
kindling  vigor,  they  ascribed  these  accessions  of 
life  to  an  animating  power  of  goodness,  and  fell 
upon  their  knees  and  worshipped  it.  They 
invented  the  word  sacred  to  define,  as  well  as  a 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST  51 

single  word  might  do,  these  animating  influences ; 
and  when,  after  an  habitual  association  of  the  felt 
effects  and  the  imagined  causes,  they  desired  to 
experience  again  the  remembered  blessings,  they 
invoked  the  symbol  of  these  causal  circumstances 
and  hastened  on  the  consequence.  They  estab 
lished  ceremonies  in  the  hope  of  putting  themselves 
and  their  children  in  the  way  of  receiving  the 
benignant  gifts  of  the  Spirit.  They  kept  old 
traditions,  usages,  terms,  and  practices,  as  a 
grown  man  calls  his  father  and  his  mother  "papa" 
and  "mamma";  and  by  unreasonable  association 
of  sentiments  they  swelled  childish  emotions  into 
manly  deeds.  It  may  even  be  that  these  super 
stitious  imaginings  of  the  past  were  instinctive 
recognitions  of  forces  uncomprehended,  happy 
Teachings  out  for  spiritual  sustenance,  and  erron 
eous  only  in  the  explanation  of  their  nature; 
that  they  really  found  a  way  to  draw  upon  secret 
sources  of  power  and  life. 

What  is  less  reasonable  than  baptism  ?  But  if 
a  man  has  been  baptized,  and  his  father,  and  his 
father's  father,  and  his  again,  then  the  memory 
of  these  repeated  dedications  of  young  life,  —  the 
memory  of  young  and  radiant  mothers  praying 
and  smiling  as  they  prayed,  —  from  a  time  back 
beyond  all  records,  renders  the  ceremony  more 


52  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

potent  in  its  effect  upon  the  imagination  than  any 
argument  drawn  from  common  sense.  Such 
ceremonies  do  not  square  with  reason;  they 
quicken  deep  emotions  and  bring  their  rude  bar 
barian  strength  to  the  support  of  right  doing. 
Men  who  stroll  across  the  fields  of  Gettysburg  and 
mark  the  contours  of  the  hills,  the  slope  of  the 
falling  ground,  and  feel  their  feet  press  the  very 
sods  pressed  by  the  dead  and  dying  on  those 
three  great  days,  do  not  ask  whether  on  that 
summit  a  factory  might  be  built,  on  this  meadow 
grain  planted,  and  along  that  ancient  line  of 
fence  a  highway  laid  out;  they  stop,  and 
highly  resolve  to  quit  themselves  like  men  on 
whatever  field  the  battle  of  life  may  chance  to 
range  them. 

If  men  are  moved  to  adhere  to  the  cause  of  right 
because  of  visions  and  dreams  of  other  men  who 
died  long  ago,  if  they  are  cheered  and  emboldened 
because  they  wear  a  uniform,  follow  a  flag,  and 
tramp  to  the  rolling  of  sticks  beaten  on  taut  pig 
skin,  why  not  keep  these  beneficial  supports, 
irrational  though  they  are  ?  A  thousand  chances 
every  day  remind  us  that  we  are  not  creatures  of 
reason,  but  act  willy-nilly  in  response  to  innu 
merable  stimuli  that  prick  us  from  we  know  not 
where. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST  53 

Marriage  under  the  new  dispensation  will  not 
be  a  sacrament.  But  is  not  this  a  question  of 
words  ?  How  is  a  man,  in  the  full  flood  of  ro 
mantic  passion,  going  to  formulate  with  any  pre 
tense  of  fitness  the  sentiments  that  draw  him  high 
above  the  meannesses  of  life,  unless  he  calls  on 
God  to  witness,  and  vows  to  love,  honor,  and 
cherish,  forever  ?  These  rites  are  stammering 
efforts  to  give  expression  to  sentiment.  Never 
again  is  God  revealed  so  present  to  man  and 
woman,  never  again  is  a  moment  in  their  wedded 
lives  so  sacred.  No  man  knows  a  sentiment 
except  at  the  moment  when  he  feels  it ;  the  most 
vivid  imagination  falls  hopelessly  short  of  another 
man's  passion  or  even  of  his  own  remembered 
emotions.  If  passion  is  to  be  expressed  in  form 
or  word,  it  must  be  by  him  whom  the  passion  at 
the  moment  possesses ;  and  to  him  love  is  of  God 
and  eternal. 

In  the  new  religion  there  are  to  be  no  interme 
diaries  between  God  and  man,  none  to  whom,  by 
self-dedication  and  long  ministration,  the  habits 
of  self-sacrifice,  of  aspiration,  of  willing  unworldly 
things,  of  obeying  high  impulses,  shall  have 
become  a  power  and  an  authority  fit  to  help  those 
whom  the  common  occupations  of  life  encumber; 
none  to  whom  music,  poetry,  gratitude,  and  love 


54  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

are  daily  cares,  to  whom  the  old  trappings  of 
holiness  are  especially  dear.  God  will  be  so 
immanent  in  nitrogen  and  carbon,  in  drop  of 
water  and  puff  of  smoke,  that  nothing  else  will  be 
necessary;  we  need  no  intermediary  to  feel  heat 
or  cold,  to  catch  waves  of  light  and  sound,  and 
such  other  vibrations  as  do  not  elude  us.  The 
alderman  will  register  the  names  of  our  children, 
the  mayor  our  contracts  for  the  reproduction  of  our 
kind,  the  sheriff's  deputy  may  superintend  the 
cremation  of  our  bodies.  Churches,  purged  from 
superstition,  fetiches,  and  idolatry,  will  be  turned 
into  parlors  for  summer  lectures,  as  in  the  golden 
age  swords  were  beaten  into  ploughshares;  and 
chapels  will  become  reading-rooms  with  scientific 
tracts  on  the  tables  and  the  best  literature  on  the 
shelves.  Surgeons,  physicians,  dentists,  and  other 
health  officers  of  society,  will  satisfy  the  rational 
needs  of  mankind;  and  the  ignorant  yearnings, 
the  unintelligible  appetites,  that  have  cried  aloud 
for  a  draught  that  shall  satisfy  them,  will  atrophy 
for  lack  of  pampering. 

Ill 

Above  all,  in  this  new  religion  there  shall  be 
no  mystery.  Along  the  periphery  of  this  luminous 
spot,  which  our  senses  shine  upon,  we  shall,  to  be 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE   PAST  55 

sure,  still  continue  to  come  into  direct  contact 
with  the  dark  and  the  unknown ;  but  we  shall  let 
it  alone.  Like  well-behaved  children,  we  shall 
not  concern  ourselves  with  what  is  not  set  on  the 
table  before  us.  The  old,  foolish,  passionate  cry 
demanding  to  know  why,  why,  why,  do  I  suffer 
pain  ?  Why  am  I  called  out  of  the  tranquil  insen 
tient  mass  into  this  sentient  being,  merely  to  feel 
my  nerves  quiver  and  shrivel  in  the  fires  of  grief, 
disappointment,  sorrow,  jealousy,  and  shame  ? 
Why,  oh,  why,  am  I  ?  And  what  art  Thou,  dread 
power  by  whose  will  I  live  ?  These  futile  ques 
tions,  obviously  asked  far  too  often,  will  be 
dropped.  In  fact,  mystery  is  to  be  ignored. 
Men,  who  in  love  and  longing  fling  themselves 
away  from  the  things  they  know  on  the  bosom 
of  mystery,  stretching  their  arms  toward  the  great 
dark,  are  no  longer  to  be  tolerated.  All  the  cor 
relatives  of  mystery  —  awe,  reverence,  holiness 
—  must  depart  together  with  mystery.  And  yet 
what  is  knowledge,  what  at  any  moment  and  how 
large  is  the  content  of  consciousness  ?  Are  we 
to  live,  incurious  islanders,  forever  satisfied  to  turn 
our  faces  inland  and  forswear  the  long  encircling 
beach,  where  the  waves  of  mystery  forever  beat 
and  ocean  winds  bend  the  fringing  trees,  shaking 
their  tops  to  sibylline  utterance  ? 


56  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

And  is  our  reasoning  self  the  most  intimate 
part  of  us,  the  most  permanent  and  central  ? 
Is  that  the  axis  of  our  revolving  life,  to  which 
moment  by  moment  new  sensations  are  fastened, 
and  from  which  memories  are  sloughed  off? 
Is  that  the  tube  through  which  the  wind  of  life 
passes,  catching  its  melody  from  chance  stops  by 
the  way  ?  Why  then  does  the  call  of  a  bird,  or  the 
note  of  a  violin,  stir  us  so  profoundly  ?  There  is  a 
pleasure  in  the  dark,  a  joy  in  the  night,  a  relief 
from  the  inadequacy  of  waking,  a  freedom  from 
the  thraldom  of  sight  and  speculation.  It  is 
only  through  mystery  and  in  mystery  that  man 
has  the  feeling  of  buoyancy,  of  an  all-embracing 
being  that  bears  him  up,  of  an  imagined  contact 
with  something  unfathomable.  In  the  light  of 
day,  staring  at  the  outward  aspects  of  such  things 
as  are  within  his  horizon,  he  feels  the  littleness 
of  his  possessions,  of  his  interests,  of  himself  and 
his  universe,  he  feels  their  insipidity  and  futility. 

All  the  phenomena  that  astronomy,  physics, 
chemistry,  open  their  windows  on  derive  their 
qualities  from  man.  The  stars  and  the  interstellar 
spaces  are  glorious  and  awe-inspiring,  because 
man  is  here  to  feel  the  glory  and  the  awe.  The 
minutest  elements  that  reveal  themselves  to  the 
chemist  are  marvellous  because  of  our  ignorance. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE   PAST  57 

This  universe,  unreflected  in  any  intelligence, 
moving  unknown,  unthinking,  and  unthought, 
would  be  an  immeasurable  ennui.  It  is  the 
human  relation  that  flatters  the  mountain-tops 
of  science  and  gilds  its  discoveries  with  heavenly 
alchemy.  The  marvellous  is  merely  our  first 
acquaintance  with  the  unfamiliar.  But  mystery 
is  out  of  the  category  of  the  marvellous.  Man, 
in  face  of  that  which  transcends  his  intelligence, 
experiences  a  rest  from  effort,  a  peace;  he  feels 
the  impotence  of  vexation  and  of  striving.  A 
pervasive  calm  that  cannot  be  shaken  wraps 
him  round  ;  he  is  free  from  the  importunity  of  his 
senses.  Neither  sight,  nor  sound,  nor  movement, 
nor  dimension,  nor  scope  for  activity,  disturbs 
him;  nothing  is  present  but  a  fading  conscious 
ness  that  self  seems  slowly  drifting  from  him. 
As  when  a  long-drawn  note  upon  a  violin  is  held 
until  the  hearer  no  longer  hears  whether  it  con 
tinues  or  has  ceased,  and  this  uncertainty  fills 
his  attention ;  so  man,  confronting  the  mystery 
that  encompasses  all  existence,  absorbed  and  self- 
forgetful,  insensibly  doubts  whether  it  and  he  are 
or  are  not.  As  the  mind  is  refreshed  and  inspired 
by  sleep,  by  exile  from  things  and  images,  by 
submersion  in  self-unconsciousness,  so,  too,  in  the 
presence  of  mystery,  loosed  from  the  oppression 


58  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

of  the  familiar  and  the  known,  lifted  above  the 
friction  and  the  fret  of  petty  cause  and  conse 
quence,  the  mind,  grasping  nothing,  touching 
nothing,  feeling  but  freedom,  is  refreshed  and 
inspirited. 

From  this  bath  of  his  soul,  man  comes  back  to 
earth  and  daily  life  purified  and  ennobled.  The 
trivial  has  a  glint  of  some  far-off  meaning,  the 
common  loses  the  texture  of  its  commonness,  and 
our  animal  life  —  the  needs  and  appetites  of  the 
body  —  becomes  the  symbol  of  something  that 
shall  justify  toil  and  sacrifice.  It  is  for  this  that 
creeds  have  gone  beyond  the  verge  of  common- 
sense  and  practical  understanding  in  their  endeav 
ors  to  find  some  symbol  to  express  the  incompre 
hensible.  And  if  you  once  grant  the  significance 
of  mystery,  —  that  it  transcends  experience 
and  cannot  be  classed  in  this  order  of  phe 
nomena  or  in  that,  —  then  why  not  let  each  man 
adjust  his  relations  with  it  as  he  thinks  or  feels 
to  be  the  best  for  him  ?  Let  him  express  his 
approach,  his  envisagement,  his  reactions,  all  his 
relations  with  mystery,  in  such  forms  and  ways  as 
he  pleases ;  let  him  take  such  aids  to  further  what 
to  him  is  a  desirable  state  of  being  as  his  experience 
shall  counsel.  There  is  still,  for  some  people  at 
least,  in  the  vaulted  nave,  in  the  exultant,  heaven- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST  59 

ward  leap  of  the  pointed  arches,  in  the  glory  of 
color,  in  the  long,  deep  rolling  of  the  organ,  a 
power  that  awakens  dormant  capacities  for  wor 
ship.  Even  in  the  little  wayside  church,  where 
friends  have  met  together  for  years,  where  the  last 
words  have  been  said  over  the  well-beloved  dead, 
where  vows  have  been  plighted,  where  babies  have 
cooed  at  the  minister  while  the  young  parents 
gazed  proudly  at  each  other,  there  is  a  touch  of 
poetry  that  pushes  back  some  bolt  in  the  heart  and 
opens  the  door  to  higher  purposes.  "Open  wide 
the  door  of  my  heart  that  Thou  mayst  enter  in," 
said  St.  Augustine.  What  matter,  so  long  as  the 
door  is  opened,  whether  it  is  music,  liturgy,  ritual, 
the  blending  sweetness  of  sad  and  happy  memories, 
or  some  rational  key,  that  opens  the  door  ? 

Another  distinction  between  the  old  religion 
and  the  new  is  the  attitude  toward  pain.  Under 
the  old,  often,  oddly  enough  it  is  true,  pain  was 
regarded  as  the  gift  of  God,  something  to  be 
accepted  with  humility  and  resignation.  Death, 
disease,  disappointment  were,  if  not  marks  of 
special  favor,  marks  of  special  interest.  Under 
the  new  religion,  pain  is  a  base  inconvenience, 
an  ignoble  discomfort,  to  be  removed  speedily 
and  completely.  Nobody  will  quarrel  with  the 
attempt  to  remove  pain  as  speedily  and  as 


60  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

completely  as  possible.  Pain  hinders  living  and 
loving,  and  is  an  evil.  But  we  have  not  yet 
succeeded  in  removing  pain,  and  there  is  no 
prospect  that  we  shall.  Death,  disease,  discon 
tent,  coolness  betwixt  lovers,  the  indifference  of 
friends,  the  broken  promises  of  life,  are  not  to  be 
got  rid  of.  How  had  we  best  look  upon  such  pains 
while  we  endure  them  ?  Shall  we  regard  them  as 
a  tear  in  a  garment,  a  leak  in  a  pipe,  as  a  mere  base 
inconvenience,  or  may  we  do  as  the  old  religion 
teaches,  and  try  to  climb  up  on  them  as  steps  to  a 
fuller  and  larger  life  ?  The  place  of  pain  in  natural 
philosophy,  whether  it  be  a  link  in  the  chain  of 
human  action  or  a  mere  register  to  record  a  back 
ward  step,  is  not  of  great  consequence  to  us.  If 
from  pain  we  can  call  forth  resolutions  that  free 
us  from  the  bonds  of  lust,  of  gluttony,  or  other 
bestiality,  if  we  can  use  it  as  a  background  from 
which  the  colors  of  life  stand  out  in  greater  charm, 
or  as  the  death  of  old  life  from  which  newer  and 
better  life  springs  up,  why  should  we  not  let  the 
gains  shine  back  upon  that  liberating  and  fertiliz 
ing  pain,  and  dignify  it  with  the  name  of  blessing  ? 
Why  not  deem  it  good  in  its  own  bitter  way  as  the 
Christians  do,  and  let  gratitude  cluster  about  it, 
and  praise  it  as  a  condition  and  a  help  to  the  birth 
of  higher  life  ? 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST  6l 

To  reject  this  old  use  of  pain  because  it  is 
superstitious  in  origin,  to  refuse  to  make  it  our 
servant  because  we  cannot  banish  it,  is  wasteful, 
and,  being  wasteful,  blameworthy.  Does  not 
the  desirable  future,  the  happy  land  beyond  the 
horizon  of  the  present,  show  more  clearly  to  the 
spirit  in  pain  ?  Does  this  not  see  —  purified  from 
the  distractions,  the  temptations,  the  misconcep 
tions  that  dog  the  steps  of  happiness  and  content 
—  what  is  right,  what  is  just,  what  is  good  ?  To 
strike  from  human  history  the  records  of  pain,  the 
refinement,  the  ennoblement  of  man  by  suffering, 
when  that  has  been  accepted  as  a  means  of  grace, 
would  cheapen  that  history  indeed.  Self-sacri 
fice,  too,  must  go.  Its  remote  prototype,  human 
sacrifice,  its  closer  analogies,  the  holocaust  of 
beeves,  the  blood  of  goats,  the  burning  of  incense, 
are  common  arguments  to  show  us  how  supersti 
tious  the  practice  is. 

The  new  theology  is  surely  right  in  this :  We 
must  either  reject  or  accept  the  principle  of  sacri 
fice.  If  we  reject  the  principle,  we  commit  our 
selves  to  the  doctrine  of  the  right  of  each  to  the 
fullest  enjoyment  of  life  that  he  can  attain.  No 
man  is  to  make  way  for  anything  less  strong  than 
himself,  or  to  sacrifice  himself,  or  anything  that 
is  his,  for  another's  good.  If  we  accept  the 


62  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

principle,  we  can  ill  justify  our  course  by  reason. 
For  we  cannot  consistently  stop  at  arbitrary  limits 
to  sacrifice,  as  for  the  good  of  a  higher  being,  of  the 
community,  of  society  at  large,  saying  that  so  far 
sacrifice  is  good  but  no  further.  And  if  we  carry 
it  out  to  logical  completeness  we  also  run  foul  of 
reason;  for  it  is  contrary  to  reason  to  sacrifice 
every  member  of  a  society  for  the  sake  of  all ;  and 
it  is  still  more  absurd  for  each  generation  to  sacri 
fice  itself  for  the  sake  of  the  next ;  for  then  the  long 
results  of  sacrifice  would  accumulate  for  the  ulti 
mate  descendants  of  the  human  race,  until  the  last 
man  should  finally  experience  the  last  satisfaction 
in  solitude. 

We  can  justify  sacrifice  only  on  the  principle 
that  there  is  in  sacrifice  some  element  of  good  for 
the  sacrificial  victim,  some  breath  of  a  larger  life, 
some  draught  of  a  nobler  existence,  some  light  from 
a  higher  sphere,  if  only  for  a  time,  how  short 
soever.  Society  may,  indeed,  punish  its  members 
who  refuse  to  sacrifice  themselves  for  the  common 
weal  so  sternly  that  they  shall  be  afraid  to  dis 
obey  ;  but  then  the  doctrine  of  self-sacrifice  will 
be  destroyed.  Or,  society  may  inculcate  by  edu 
cation  a  willingness  to  die  or  suffer  for  the  general 
good,  but  that  is  by  an  appeal  to  superstition  and 
bigotry  of  an  order  wholly  analogous  to  those 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST  63 

religious  superstitions  which  the  new  theology 
rejects.  Unless  we  become  pure  egotists,  we  are 
forced  to  come  very  close  to  the  Christians ;  for 
what  reason  is  there  for  preferring  altruism  to 
egotism  other  than  the  witness  of  experience  that 
to  common  men  altruism  offers  a  deeper  and  more 
intense  emotional  life  ? 

Under  the  old  religion,  sacrifice  was  not  judged 
by  its  origin.  It  was  regarded  as  justifying  itself. 
For,  if  what  was  sacrificed  was  a  mere  passing 
pleasure,  a  desire,  an  ambition,  then,  the  appetite 
once  passed,  the  sacrifice  left  barely  a  ripple  on 
the  memory,  and  the  sense  of  self-mastery,  of  an 
easy  wheel  that  lightly  turns  the  ship,  amply 
repaid  the  loss.  If  the  sacrifice  was  serious,  even 
to  death,  it  was  an  oblation  to  duty  and  to  the  God 
from  whom  duty  emanated.  Sacrifice  was  not  a 
loss ;  it  was  at  most  a.  displacement,  a  changing 
about,  a  shift ;  it  added  a  more  than  compensating 
increase  of  power  to  some  other  member  of  the 
mystic  body  of  which  the  willing  victim  was  a 
part.  He  served  his  God,  and  his  God  blessed 
him.  When  the  soul  labors  under  an  overwhelm 
ing  emotion,  words  are  idle  and  music  is  weak, 
and  there  is  no  voice  to  express  the  joy  and  rap 
ture  of  love  and  worship,  except  sacrifice.  It 
sounds  unreasonable,  but  if  we  delve  deep  into 


64  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

human  nature,  we  find  strange  correlations,  odd 
fellowships  of  experience  and  sentiment. 

This  fresh  rejection  of  the  notions  of  sacrifice, 
of  holiness,  of  mystery,  of  sacraments,  of  a  divine 
presence,  of  the  spiritual  uses  of  pain,  is  a  recur 
rence  of  the  familiar  attempt  to  put  human  life 
on  one  plane,  to  reduce  it  to  one  scale  of  values, 
to  render  it  intelligible,  subject  to  demonstration, 
to  a  final  philosophy.  It  is  the  working  of  the 
positive  mind,  which  is  impatient  of  the  sceptical 
and  the  undecided,  and,  out  of  desire  to  have 
things  settled,  inclines  to  any  law  rather  than  to 
anarchy,  to  any  order  rather  than  chaos,  to  any 
scheme  of  reason  rather  than  to  superstition.  It 
proceeds  from  a  bent  for  action ;  it  must  be  up 
and  doing,  it  must  have  a  course,  it  must  hoist 
sail  and  away,  with  chart,  compass,  and  pole- 
star.  But  the  sea-captain,  however  great  his 
experience,  however  wide  his  knowledge,  is 
obliged  to  stay  upon  the  watery  floor  between  the 
sea  beneath  and  the  air  above.  He  is  out  of  his 
element  when  he  transfers  his  reckonings  to  reli 
gion.  There  are  so  many  sides  to  life,  so  many 
sorts  of  experience,  so  many  kinds  of  character, 
disposition,  and  temperament,  so  many  different 
conceptions  of  what  constitutes  happiness  and  the 
value  of  life,  that  one  might  well  leave  the  slow 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST  65 

adjusting  mind  to  continue  to  piece  and  patch 
the  old  constitution  of  his  belief,  changing  it  here 
and  there,  mending  and  tinkering,  but  preserving 
the  main  fabric  which  for  centuries  has  procured 
him  peace  or  victory  and  honor.  Old  conditions, 
the  easy,  rambling,  comfortable  habitation  of  the 
human  heart,  overgrown  with  memories  and 
affections,  if  pulled  down  to  make  way  for  a 
modern  structure,  would  leave  desolation  and 
barrenness.  The  lares  and  penates  would  not 
come  to  the  new  hearth. 

IV 

This  discord  between  the  old  religion  and  the 
new  is  really,  in  one  aspect  at  least,  a  reappearance 
of  the  contention  over  fact  and  poetry.  To  some 
men  poetry  is  idle,  deceitful,  tending  to  senti 
mental  mooning,  a  hinderance  to  doing,  a  barrier 
to  achievement,  and  beneficent  only  in  its  sterner 
aspects,  as  filling  the  soul  with  Miltonic  images 
and  a  high  disdain ;  to  other  men  poetry  —  the 
poetry  of  childhood,  of  romance,  of  daring  and 
delicacy,  of  far-off  scenes  and  idolized  images,  of 
unattainable  visions  and  momentary  dreams,  of 
lights  and  shadows  that  never  were  on  land  or  sea, 
of  hopeless  causes  and  impossible  beliefs  —  seems 
the  best  justification  of  life ;  and  the  old  religion 


66  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  PAST 

is  poetry.  And  poetry  is  a  word  of  far-reaching 
meaning.  The  poet  is  a  man  upon  whom  the 
throbs  of  human  experience  beat  with  a  clearer 
and  more  melodious  resonance  than  upon  other 
men.  His  imagination,  led  by  a  happy  craving 
for  harmony  between  these  resonant  experiences, 
selects  and  arranges,  creating  a  melody;  then,  pro 
ceeding  from  melody  to  melody,  he  constructs  a 
synthesis  of  sweet,  concordant  strains,  and  to 
these,  as  the  echoes  swell  through  his  brain,  an 
ideal  significance  attaches.  The  flush  of  color 
when  dawn  kisses  the  earliest  clouds,  the  wave  of 
sound  when  the  breeze  stirs  the  ripples  and  bends 
the  rushes,  the  sensation  of  touch  when  hand 
meets  hand,  do  not  and  cannot  of  themselves 
satisfy  the  yearnings  they  awaken  ;  echoes,  circling 
and  rising,  proceed  onward  and  upward  —  till 
the  memory  of  each,  almost  divorced  from  its 
origin,  becomes  to  the  exultant  imagination  a 
message  from  the  infinite. 

This  ideal  metempsychosis  comes  over  all  the 
great  experiences  of  life ;  ideas,  thus  begotten, 
like  some  divine  pollen,  leaven  as  they  permeate, 
and  give  a  new  aspect  to  common  joys  and  pains, 
to  right  and  wrong,  to  love  and  duty.  Emotion, 
skilful  musician,  touches  notes  which  in  them 
selves  are  idle,  until  the  hearer  is  banished  from 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE   PAST  67 

the  world  of  bald  experience  into  an  ideal  world  of 
transcendent  values.  This  ideal  world  becomes 
more  important,  more  real  than  the  phenomena  of 
daily  experience,  lightly  undergone  and  lightly 
forgotten.  It  is  the  dreamer's  dominant  habita 
tion,  it  becomes  his  home;  and  by  it  he  explains 
the  trivial  sequences  of  physical  sensations. 
Because  in  this  ideal  universe  there  is  a  God, 
because  there  is  an  immortal  life,  because  right  is 
right  forever,  and  wrong,  wrong,  therefore  human 
life,  the  relations  of  man  to  man,  the  satisfactions 
and  discomforts  of  conscience,  the  success  or 
failure  of  the  soul,  are  matters  of  mighty  conse 
quence. 

This  ideal  world  is  the  world  of  religion.  This 
is  what  the  poetic  needs  of  mankind  have  done 
with  facts  and  imaginings  picked  up  almost  at 
random.  Christianity,  for  instance,  seized  on 
many  harsh  and  grating  notes,  as  well  as  on  sweet 
sounds,  —  the  legends  of  Chaldaean  shepherds,  the 
traditions  of  wandering  sheiks,  the  chronicles  of 
barbarous  chieftains,  the  rites  of  fanatical  priests, 
the  prophecies  of  unpoised  minds,  as  well  as  on 
the  story  of  a  beautiful  and  holy  life,  rendered  more 
beautiful  and  holy  by  its  remoteness  from  Euro 
pean  experience,  and  on  many  another  note,  in 
itself  odd  and  seemingly  unfit  for  religious  use; 


68  THE  RELIGION  OF  THE   PAST 

and  out  of  them  it  has  created  a  religion,  which, 
with  all  its  defects,  is  permeated  with  poetry. 
The  figure  of  Christ,  the  image  of  Mary,  the 
stories  of  the  Apostolic  age,  the  Gregorian  chants, 
the  Gothic  cathedrals,  the  Divine  Comedy,  the 
vesper  bells,  are  all  parts  of  this  irrational  poetry. 
And  the  defects  are  for  the  greater  part  due  to  the 
practical  minds  who  desire  to  bring  these  strange, 
incongruous  elements  into  a  rational  union,  — 
rational  according  to  an  unpoetic  interpretation 
of  the  experiences  of  life.  And  if  one  says  that 
Christianity  is  permeated  with  poetry  rather  than 
with  truth,  it  is  because  truth  is  of  two  kinds : 
scientific  truth,  which  is  the  accumulated  experi 
ence  of  the  senses,  ranged  and  sorted  according 
to  reason ;  and  poetic  truth,  which  is  the  sorting 
and  arrangement  of  recorded  images  (exalted  and 
illumined  by  an  emotional  hunger  as  they  dwell 
in  the  memory),  in  accordance  with  the  poetic 
needs  of  mankind.  One  satisfies  the  mind,  the 
other  satisfies  the  soul.  And  as  the  soul  is  vague, 
elusive,  uncertain,  tremulous,  and  passionate,  it 
has  never  yet,  at  least  with  the  masses  of  men, 
accepted  the  conclusions  of  reason.  Its  values 
do  not  coincide  with  the  values  of  reason.  Its 
satisfactions  do  not  tally  with  the  satisfactions  of 
reason.  Therefore  rationalism  and  religion  do 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE   PAST  69 

not  agree.  Religion  can  take  strange  symbols, 
strange  doctrines,  strange  dogmas,  at  which  the 
scientific  mind  stares  with  amazement  —  sin, 
redemption,  an  incarnate  God,  a  Trinity,  a  heaven, 
and  a  hell ;  because  for  religion  these  things  do 
not  rank  as  rational  facts :  they  are  symbolic 
causes,  the  least  unsatisfactory  explanation  for  the 
emotions  and  imaginings  of  the  soul;  they  are 
the  least  unsympathetic  evasions  of  the  question, 
Why  am  I? 

One  may  criticise  Christianity,  one  may  find 
it  irrational  or  transcending  human  experience 
in  almost  every  detail,  one  may  be  repelled  by  its 
superstitions,  dull  to  its  poetry ;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  one  cannot  be  rational  and  create  a  new 
religion.  Religion  is  an  emotional  assumption 
to  explain  the  world  of  reason.  Poor  humanity, 
it  cannot  have  all  that  it  would  like.  In  our  pres 
ent  stage  of  knowledge,  at  least,  an  adequate 
expression  of  emotional  life  can  only  be  through 
poetry  and  religion.  Poetry  and  music,  love 
and  hope,  life  and  death,  these  persuade  men  that 
religion,  however  formulated  in  superstition  and 
irrational  dogma,  is  near  to  Truth. 

State  contenti,  umana  gente,  al  quia: 
che,  se  potuto  aveste  veder  tutto, 
mestier  non  era  partorir  Maria. 


CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE 


THERE  is  something  almost  unfilial  in  the  stolid 
indifference  with  which  we  pass  by  old  Christian 
dogmas.  Earnest  generations  thought,  prayed, 
yearned,  over  their  interpretation  of  the  meaning 
of  life,  and  fashioned  dogmas  which  they  believed 
would  light  the  steps  of  their  children  and  their 
children's  children  to  endless  generations,  yet  we 
scarce  look  to  see  what  these  dogmas  may  mean. 
Creeds  of  a  thousand  years  are  no  more  heeded 
than  old  letters  garnered  in  the  garret;  yet  it 
may  happen  that  among  those  old  yellowing 
sheets,  franked  and  sealed,  are  love-letters  which, 
however  dull  and  childish  they  may  seem  to  the 
fancy-free,  rekindle  old  fires  in  the  hearts  of  those 
who  have  loved  and  lost,  or  loved  in  vain. 

The  dogma-makers  lived  on  our  earth,  they  had 
faculties  like  ours,  they  loved  and  suffered,  they 
were  amazed  and  confounded ;  they,  too,  tried  to 
discover  a  formula  that  should  prove  the  key  to  the 
mystery  of  life.  The  same  mystery  that  con 
fronted  them  confronts  us  still.  To  some  men 
70 


CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE  71 

those  old  dogmas  brought  peace,  self-mastery, 
power ;  why  may  we  not  linger  a  little  to  examine 
them  ? 

We  are  not  free  to  use  dogmas  that  postulate 
facts  inconsistent  with  the  discoveries  of  science ; 
but  science  and  religion  have  different  duties. 
Science  seeks  a  formula  that  shall  square  with 
human  experience  and  satisfy  the  reason  ;  religion 
seeks  a  formula  that  shall  minister  to  what  in  our 
ignorance  we  call  the  soul's  needs  and  quicken  the 
emotions.  May  we  not  find  in  the  old  dogmas 
something  not  forbidden  by  science  that  may  still 
minister  to  the  soul's  needs  ? 

The  Christian  creed  says,  Credo  in  Spiritum 
Sanctum.  Is  there  nothing  in  human  experience 
to  justify  this  dogma  ?  At  one  time  in  the 
Middle  Ages  there  was  a  sect  of  men  who  came 
under  the  potent  influence  of  this  aspect  of  the 
Godhead.  They  believed  that  to  each  Person  of 
the  Trinity  was  allotted  his  period  of  divine 
dominion.  God  the  Father  had  had  his  reign, 
God  the  Son  was  still  reigning.  Both  reigns  had 
had  their  special  characters,  but  neither  had  been 
wholly  adequate  to  the  soul's  needs,  therefore  there 
was  ground  for  hope  that  the  Holy  Ghost  would 
soon  begin  to  reign,  and  that  the  season  of  children, 
of  lilies,  of  good  men  triumphant,  was  at  hand. 


72  CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE 

Were  not  Abate  Gioacchino  del  Fiore  and  his 
disciples  right,  in  thinking  that  the  hope  of  good 
tidings  for  the  soul  lay  in  worship  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  ?  The  conception  of  God  the  Creator  has 
its  difficulties.  The  Beginning  is  the  deep, 
permanent  mystery ;  and  the  creation  of  a  world 
in  which  pain  and  suffering  mark  every  individual 
life,  renders  the  claims  of  a  Creator  to  man's 
gratitude  very  questionable.  Also  the  idea  that 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  God  is  very  difficult.  But 
when  we  turn  toward  the  third  Person,  to  that 
aspect  of  Deity  which  has  never  yielded  to  man's 
anthropomorphic  needs,  which  at  best  has  been 
represented  by  a  dove,  a  bringer  of  peace,  do  we 
not  discern  more  light  ? 

II 

We  look  through  the  telescope  at  night  and  see 
thousands  upon  thousands  of  suns,  glorious  in  the 
surrounding  dark.  Their  majesty  inspires  us  with 
mingled  feelings :  fear  before  the  vast  unknown, 
reverence  before  the  very  great,  exaltation  at 
being  a  part  of  this  mighty  whole.  But  what,  in 
the  end,  do  we  take  away  except  bewilderment  ? 
There  is  no  peace  in  the  empyrean ;  there  is 
turmoil,  effort,  energy.  Do  we  perceive  there  the 
presence  of  God  the  Father  or  God  the  Son  ? 


CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE  73 

Yet  if  there  is  a  Divine  Spirit,  how  fit  a 
working-place  is  this  majestic  universe  for  its 
incessant  toil. 

We  look  through  the  microscope;  physicists, 
chemists,  biologists,  pry  into  the  inner  recesses  of 
matter,  only  to  find  energy  —  everywhere,  in  the 
egg,  in  spermatozoa,  in  the  minutest  particles  of 
matter,  animal,  vegetable,  or  inorganic,  —  restless 
energy,  eternal  effort.  If  we  turn  to  the  history 
of  past  life  upon  our  globe,  what  do  we  find  but 
records  of  energy,  whether  physical,  chemical,  or 
of  that  seemingly  peculiar  form  which  marks 
living  organisms,  everywhere  energy  leaving  its 
trace  in  innumerable  forms.  In  this  history  of  life, 
according  to  our  human  standards,  there  has  been 
a  long  procession,  in  which  the  principle  of  organic 
life,  from  the  earliest  period  of  vegetable  existence, 
has  advanced  through  manifold  forms,  upward, 
upward,  in  the  depths  of  the  sea,  in  the  air,  on 
land,  by  devious  routes  and  strange  passages, 
up,  up,  to  the  fish,  to  the  bird,  to  four-footed 
beasts,  and  finally  to  man.  Gradually,  steadily, 
those  mysterious  forces  which  determine  the 
nature  of  things,  have  been  shaping  gases  and 
solids,  crystals,  drops  of  water,  the  pistil  and 
stamens  of  the  plant,  the  heart,  lungs,  eye,  hand, 
and  brain  of  man.  In  all  organic  life  there  are 


74  CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE 

cells  in  restless  energy;  cells  piled  on  cells,  cells 
in  many  kinds  of  combinations,  all  taking  shape 
according  to  the  will  of  some  strenuous,  persistent, 
experimenting  force.  The  cells  of  the  clover 
arrange  themselves  to  fashion  the  flower  which 
shall  secrete  honey,  the  cells  of  the  bee  to  create  an 
insect  which  shall  gather  it,  the  cells  of  the  man  to 
form  a  creature  with  an  appetite  for  that  honey  and 
also  with  a  yearning  to  find  something  divine  in 
the  universe.  Everywhere  that  man  can  peer  he 
finds  energy  intent  upon  changing  all  that  is  into 
new  forms.  This  process,  different  as  it  looks  in 
the  very  large  and  in  the  very  small,  in  distant 
stars,  in  the  tides  of  ocean,  in  the  flora,  in  sea 
creatures  or  in  mammals,  seems  to  be  one  and  the 
same,  proceeding  through  myriad  forms  of  activity, 
always  seeking  to  effect  a  change. 

If  this  seeming  is  true,  if  all  our  world,  all  our 
universe,  is  the  workroom,  or  playground  it  may 
be,  for  the  same  energy,  may  we  not  judge  it, 
must  we  not  judge  it,  by  the  only  part  of  the  pat 
tern  that  is  open  to  our  judgment,  by  human  life 
within  our  experience  ?  How  can  corporeal 
creatures  like  ourselves,  busily  at  work  turning 
food  into  living  tissue,  entertain  but  the  most 
remote  understanding  of  elementary  gases  ? 
What  do  we  know  of  the  ambitions,  the  enthusi- 


CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE  75 

asms,  the  discouragement,  of  coral  insects  ?  All 
things  that  are,  seem  to  be  made  of  the  same  ele 
ments  which,  by  their  physico-chemical  energy 
after  infinite  experiments,  have  given  to  the 
human  brain  consciousness ;  but  we,  who  are  the 
products  of  happier  combinations,  cannot  under 
stand  these  same  potential  energies  compounded 
in  lower  forms.  We  must  judge  the  whole  process 
by  ourselves,  by  man.  This  is  the  inner  meaning 
of  the  saying,  Know  thyself.  If  we  know  our 
selves,  we  shall  know  all. 

If,  then,  this  universal  process,  when  we  see  it 
at  work  in  the  only  matters  intelligible  to  us,  in 
ourselves,  seems  to  be  an  effort  to  rise,  to  attain 
the  better,  to  bring  the  nobler  to  birth,  —  seems 
to  be  a  struggle  to  renounce  the  lower  and  mount 
to  a  higher  plane,  —  must  we  not  suppose  that  the 
laborious  energies  at  work  throughout  the  universe 
are  striving  to  do  the  same  ?  Let  us  look  at  bits 
of  the  pattern  that  we  may  perceive  what  is  the 
design.  Take  a  mother  whose  life  is  in  her  son's 
life,  whose  thoughts  are  all  of  him,  whose  hopes 
are  his,  who  dotes  upon  his  happiness;  bid  her 
choose  for  him  between  a  higher  life  linked  with 
pain  and  sorrow,  and  a  lower  life  loaded  with 
pleasures  and  worldly  success,  and  will  she  hesi 
tate  ?  The  upward  energy  that  works  through 


76  CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE 

all  her  being  will  not  let  her  choose  a  lower  plane 
for  her  son. 

Fatti  non  foste  a  viver  come  bruti, 
ma  per  seguir  virtute  e  conoscenza. 

Take  the  son  of  such  a  mother  at  a  time  when, 
young  blood  flowing  through  his  veins,  he  has 
fallen  in  love.  The  law  of  all  organic  nature  is, 
Be  fruitful  and  multiply.  The  tree  bears  fruit, 
the  vines  bring  forth  grapes,  the  herring  spawns, 
the  lioness  bears  her  cubs ;  all  creatures  obey  the 
great  command,  all  hand  on  the  miraculous  torch 
of  life.  But  the  young  lover  sees  deeper  into  the 
heart  of  things : 

I  struggle  towards  the  light;   and  ye 
Once  long'd-for  storms  of  love ! 

If  with  the  light  ye  cannot  be, 
I  bear  that  ye  remove. 

He  hears  the  pulsing  reverberations  of  the  animal 
command ;  and  he  hears  also  commands  less 
audible,  yet  to  his  soul  still  more  imperious. 
He  must  consecrate  himself  to  the  highest,  he  must, 
even  if  he  is  compelled  to  turn  his  back  on  all  the 
happiness  that  looks  so  fair  before  him,  the  sweet 
blue  eyes,  "the  soft,  enkerchiefd  hair."  Here, 
in  the  mother's  heart,  in  the  young  man's  heart, 
where  life  beats  at  its  fastest,  the  need  of  breaking 


CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE  77 

free  from  the  lower  is  most  peremptory.  Such  is 
the  pattern  wrought  by  this  energy  as  it  appears 
in  human  life.  Biologists  call  this  force  blind, 
but  to  the  ignorant  it  seems  to  see  its  path  "  as 
birds  their  trackless  way." 

Ill 

What  can  we  infer  of  this  universal  energy  but 
that  it  is  working  to  change  what  is  into  something 
higher  ?  All  this  turmoil,  this  commotion  of  earth 
and  heavens,  is  a  discontent,  and  a  struggle.  May 
we  not  here  see,  in  this  endeavor  to  supplant  the 
lower  by  the  higher,  a  Holy  Spirit  at  work  ? 

What  the  source  or  origin  of  the  universe  may 
be  lies  beyond  human  guessing;  but  there  seems 
to  be  an  imprisoned  power  struggling  to  detach 
itself  from  base  integuments,  striving  to  dominate 
some  hindering  medium,  aspiring  to  make  the 
universe  anew.  Matter,  or  whatever  we  call  the 
substance  of  the  phenomena  on  which  our  con 
sciousness  has  dawned,  however  far  from  any 
apparent  sympathy  with  man,  however  muddy 
its  vesture,  however  hideous  its  aspect,  is  under 
the  control  of  some  energy,  which  displays  itself 
in  heat,  light,  motion,  thought,  and  love.  Even 
if  the  proper  dogmatic  adjective  for  this  energy 
is  physico-chemical,  may  not  the  adjective  divine 


78  CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE 

be  appropriate  also  ?  What  limit  can  human 
foresight  assign  to  its  achievements  ?  And  as  we 
watch  this  energy  at  work  in  what  seems  to  us  our 
best  and  noblest,  may  we  not  infer  that  love  is 
the  medium  in  which  this  upward  impulse  finds 
the  least  impediment,  the  least  hinderance  to  its 
free  motions ;  or,  differently  put,  that  love  is  the 
highest  expression  of  the  universal  force  which, 
everywhere  and  without  ceasing,  is  striving  to 
create  a  universe  of  a  higher  order  ? 

It  sounds  arrogant  and  foolish  for  man  to  make 
himself  the  measure  of  the  universe,  to  assert 
that  his  thoughts  and  acts  are  the  fruit  and  crown 
of  things ;  but  he  has  no  choice.  He  seeks  every 
where,  and  finds  nothing  that  he  can  call  higher 
or  nobler  than  the  expression  of  this  energy  in  good 
men.  And  there  can  be  no  more  solemn  or  ad 
monishing  sanction  for  high  endeavor  than  the 
knowledge  that  we  are  the  standard-bearers  of  the 
divine  spirit.  It  is  ennobling  to  think  that  if  we 
advance  our  standards,  the  divine  advances;  if 
we  fall  back,  by  so  much  the  divine  loses  in  the 
battle;  that  the  divine  energy  manifesting  itself 
in  us  is  one  with  the  energy  that  whirls  the  stolid 
worlds. 

Is  not  this  the  Holy  Spirit  that  Abate  Gioac- 
chino  dimly  apprehended  ?  Is  not  this  the  force 


CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE  79 

that  dawned,  as  in  a  dream,  upon  the  conscious 
ness  of  those  mystics  who  have  felt  a  conviction 
that  they  were  face  to  face  with  God  ?  By  some 
favoring  juncture  of  circumstances  these  holy 
men  suddenly  became  sensitive  to  the  meaning  of 
the  cosmic  process,  and  their  souls  cried  out,  Lo, 
God  is  here !  Is  not  that  which  we  call  prayer 
the  unconscious  bending  of  ourselves  to  act  in 
concord  with  this  universal  energy,  as  heliotropic 
plants  turn  to  the  light  ?  This  potential  element 
in  the  stuff  that  composes  our  universe  has  been 
able  to  evolve  a  lover's  abnegation,  a  mother's 
devotion,  it  has  created  the  imagination  of  a 
Shakspere,  it  moves  to  music,  and  clothes  itself 
in  light ;  surely  it  is  divine.  Would  it  be  higher 
or  holier  if  we  could  hear  the  rush  of  Cherubim  or 
see  the  gleam  upon  a  Seraph's  wings  ? 

Man  cannot  hope,  within  his  narrow  compass  of 
sense,  to  feel  the  fulness  of  the  divine  spirit. 
He  cannot  open  his  soul  wide  enough  to  compre 
hend  what  this  universal  endeavor  is,  seemingly 
infinite  in  extent,  infinite  in  patience,  infinite  in 
perseverance.  But  if  of  the  divine  we  demand 
heroism  in  the  face  of  danger,  has  there  not  been, 
even  in  the  contracted  limits  of  human  history, 
heroism  sufficient  ?  If  of  the  divine  we  demand 
suffering,  we  have  but  to  let  our  thoughts  rest 


80  CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE 

for  an  instant  upon  the  long  ages  of  animal  life 
upon  this  globe,  one  long  track  of  blood,  in  order 
to  shudder  at  the  cruelty  endured. 

Is  not  this  struggle  of  the  higher  against  the 
lower,  whether  under  the  waters  of  ocean,  in  pre- 
glacial  jungles,  or  in  our  own  hearts,  as  wonderful 
and  splendid  as  the  conflict  of  Michael  and  the  host 
of  heaven  against  the  rebellious  angels  ?  Surely, 
yes. 

Suppose  that  man  is  the  highest  life  in  all  the 
universe,  suppose  that  his  race  and  all  animal  life 
is  doomed  to  destruction  as  our  planet  cools  off,  is 
it  not  better  to  have  endeavored  and  suffered  than 
never  to  have  endeavored  at  all  ?  Possibly,  some 
where,  a  memory  may  live  of  how  the  human  race 
rose  from  bestiality  and  lust  to  devotion  to  beauty, 
truth,  and  love.  But  even  if  no  memory  of  man 
shall  continue  after  he  has  perished,  still,  through 
out  the  universe,  the  restless  energy  that  animated 
him  will  continue  undaunted,  making  its  experi 
ments,  striving  to  change  that  which  is  into  that 
which,  according  to  our  human  judgment,  shall 
be  better.  Is  not  this  a  Divine  Spirit,  whether  it 
works  through  visible,  tangible,  ponderable  things, 
or  through  spiritual  essences;  whether  it  be  an 
archangel  or  physico-chemical  activity  that  has 
created  the  soul  of  man  ? 


CREDO  QUIA  POSSIBILE  8 1 

Is  not  this  the  aspect  of  the  Trinity  that  must, 
as  the  disciples  of  Joachim  believed,  outlive  its 
other  aspects,  and  do  most  to  satisfy  the  yearning 
desire  of  man  to  find  something  holy  in  the  uni 
verse  ?  May  we  not  all  repeat :  Credo  in  Spiritum 
Sanctum  ? 


ON  BEING  ILL 

THERE  are,  according  to  the  poet,  "four  seasons 
in  the  mind  of  man";  and  each  has  its  appro 
priate  mood,  its  range  of  vision,  its  philosophy. 
But,  in  addition  to  these  four  seasons,  there  are 
two  other  categories  which  shift  a  man's  thoughts, 
the  object  of  his  vision  and  his  philosophy,  even 
more  than  the  change  from  Spring  to  Summer 
or  from  Autumn  to  Winter.  These  other  cate 
gories  are  health  and  sickness.  In  these  two 
states  man  beholds  two  very  different  worlds ; 
so  different  are  these  worlds,  that  if  a  man  should 
live  in  one  only,  he  would  know  but  half  the 
human  universe. 

Health  is  the  normal  state.  In  it  the  faculties 
are  in  equilibrium  and  fulfil  their  obvious  duties. 
Upon  it,  as  if  it  was  a  sure  foundation,  science 
builds  hypotheses  and  dogmas,  and  men  of 
action  with  a  turn  for  literature  construct  what 
they  call  a  sane  and  happy  philosophy  of  life. 
Health  is  the  condition  of  life's  daily  routine. 
Health  accepts  life  as  a  matter  of  course,  without 
82 


ON  BEING  ILL  83 

demur,  without  criticism,  almost  without  appre 
ciation.  A  healthy  man  is  indifferent  to  all  theo 
ries  about  the  universe;  one  theory  is  as  good  as 
another.  He  himself  is  the  centre  of  his  universe ; 
and  his  senses,  like  so  many  radii,  describe  its 
uttermost  bounds. 

Suppose  the  healthy  man  to  be  a  farmer. 
Then  the  prime  interests  of  his  life  will  cluster 
around  his  barn,  his  cowshed  and  his  vegetable 
garden.  His  affections  embrace  his  potato 
hillocks,  his  purpling  cabbages,  and  the  corn- 
patch,  where  in  July  the  stately  stalks  deck 
their  heads  with  plumes  and  outdo  in  parallel 
symmetry  the  spears  of  Velasquez'  conquering 
Spaniards  at  Breda.  Here  is  his  universe  — 
house,  barn,  woodpile,  chicken  run,  pump,  or 
chard  and  meadows — what  to  him  are  the 
outlying  regions  beyond  the  farm  limits  ?  How 
is  he  concerned  with  fields  and  woodland  across 
the  county  turnpike,  with  countries  over  seas, 
or  with  the  ethereal  distances  that  encompass 
our  solar  system  ?  Health  has  fixed  the  bourns 
of  his  intellectual  kingdom.  Its  axis  is  in  the 
stable,  and  all  the  cloud-capped  hypotheses 
that  science  with  infinite  industry  has  built  up 
concerning  what  lies  between  his  boundary  line 
and  the  farthest  regions  of  infinite  space,  count 


84  ON  BEING  ILL 

for  less  than  the  humming  of  the  teakettle  or 
the  cackle  of  the  hens.  All  attempts  by  Science 
or  Philosophy  to  shift  the  central  point  of  his 
universe  to  some  part  of  the  Milky  Way,  or  to 
the  Absolute,  must  fail.  And  yet  it  is  upon  the 
healthy  man,  upon  the  reports  of  his  senses, 
upon  the  processes  of  his  reason,  that  science 
builds  its  truths,  and  philosophy  its  hypotheses. 
The  business  of  a  healthy  man  is  to  live  his 
life;  and  in  order  to  live  it  well,  he  must  make 
himself,  so  far  as  he  can,  a  creature  of  instinct, 
if  possible  an  automaton.  He  adores  the  god 
of  action,  because  health  is,  in  its  manifestations, 
a  mere  bundle  of  activities.  Love  of  action  is 
the  patriotism  of  health.  This  attitude  toward 
life  gives  a  comfortable  sense  of  snugness,  of 
familiarity,  of  home,  and  protects  such  as  adopt 
it  against  the  vast  outer  universe  that  serves,  it 
seems,  but  to  confuse  and  dismay  them.  It 
holds  a  man's  attention  fast  to  the  region  where 
he  fills  his  belly,  chooses  his  wife,  digs,  hoes, 
drives  his  cows  afield  and  calls  them  back  to  the 
milking.  This  attitude  is  natural,  human;  it 
proclaims  man's  origin.  But  in  the  opinion  of 
those  who  care  for  unrestricted  liberty  of  specula 
tion  and  imagining,  it  deprives  the  human  mind 
of  its  noblest  birthright.  For  them  it  is  high 


ON  BEING  ILL  85 

treason  to  what  should  be  man's  governing 
principle.  Nevertheless,  action  remains  the  basis 
of  life;  and,  as  even  the  most  sceptical  critic 
must  admit,  action  renders  a  service  that  might 
well  seem  to  compensate  for  all  the  limitations 
which  it  imposes  upon  the  human  spirit.  Action 
makes  a  theatre  out  of  life. 

If  we  were  to  weigh  with  even  hand  one  by  one 
the  good  and  evil  things  that  fate  lays  in  the 
balances,  in  order  to  determine  whether  human 
life  be  worth  the  living,  perhaps  none  of  the 
things  deemed  good  —  not  the  luxuriant  vitality 
of  youth,  not  affection,  nor  romantic  love,  not 
interest  in  work,  nor  the  approbation  of  our 
fellows  —  would  weigh  as  heavily  as  the  pleasure 
got  from  the  theatre  of  life.  The  drama  of  life 
is  unintermittent,  boundless  in  resource;  of 
infinite  variety,  it  appeals  to  every  taste.  It 
reckons  up  its  actors  by  the  million.  It  dresses 
up  in  royal  robes,  with  crowns,  sceptres,  and  all 
the  wardrobe  of  imperial  millinery,  kings  and 
emperors,  moves  them  about,  and  causes  them 
to  utter  majestic  harangues,  and  pirouette  over 
the  stage  in  a  manner  to  rivet  our  amazed  at 
tention.  It  takes  bandits,  pirates,  cossacks, 
and  parades  them  to  and  fro  to  a  wild  music. 
And  these  are  but  supernumeraries  who  fill  in 


86  ON  BEING  ILL 

the  background  and  the  wings  of  the  stage.  A 
little  in  front  of  them  come  players,  whose  names 
are  printed  on  the  programme,  enumerated  as 
statesmen,  philosophers,  poets,  musicians,  ex 
plorers,  and  so  on.  Finally,  in  front  of  them  all, 
come  the  protagonists  in  Everyman's  drama  — 
the  household  headed  by  the  cook,  the  milkman, 
and  the  butcher's  boy,  the  immediate  neighbors 
(each  separate  group  playing  its  own  comedy 
within  the  great  comedy),  husband  and  wife, 
nursery  maid  and  babies,  schoolboys  and  tutors, 
guests,  cousins,  callers,  and  all  the  multitude  who 
fill  the  minor  roles,  the  chauffeur,  the  trolley-car 
conductor,  the  old  lady  who  in  times  of  illness 
comes  to  advise  mental  healing,  the  elderly  clerk, 
the  lazy  office-boy,  the  fashionable  tailor,  the 
cobbler  round  the  corner,  the  habitue  at  the 
club,  the  fruit-vender,  the  policeman,  the  parson's 
assistant,  the  political  reformer.  The  theatre  of 
life  with  its  tragedy,  comedy,  farce,  its  gruesome 
scenes  and  its  delightful  episodes,  has  but  one 
patent  fault;  it  has  no  plot  and  no  apparent 
meaning.  Healthy  men,  the  rich,  the  pious, 
praise  both  plot  and  meaning;  but  the  indiffer 
ent  spectator  can  distinguish  neither,  nothing 
but  eternal  motion.  A  rational  explanation  of 
action  is  that  in  providing  the  theatre  of  life  it 


ON  BEING  ILL  87 

furnishes  the  justification  of  life.  All  living 
things  are  actors  who  keep  on  going  in  order  that 
scene  shall  follow  scene  without  intermission ; 
for  this  men  preserve  their  own  lives,  for  this 
they  rear  children,  future  actors,  who  shall  take  the 
places  of  those  whose  parts  are  ended.  "All  the 
world's  a  stage,  and  all  the  men  and  women  merely 
players/'  but  men  and  women  are  also  specta 
tors.  All  are  admitted  to  the  show;  some  sit 
in  the  orchestra  stalls,  some  in  the  upper  gallery. 
At  one  and  the  same  time  all  men  are  both  players 
and  spectators ;  they  may  be  mute  supernumera 
ries  in  the  noisier  parts  of  the  drama,  but  all  are 
protagonists  of  some  particular  episode.  All  this 
we  owe  to  action,  and  action  is  the  product  of  health. 
Action,  then,  keeps  life  alive  and  furnishes  a 
nonpareil  theatre.  To  the  eyes  of  the  healthy 
man  this  theatre  is  delightful  and  life  an  invalu 
able  possession.  This  is  the  mood  of  health. 

II 

Once  a  man  is  ill,  the  scene  changes.  All  that 
great  stretch  of  universe  that  formerly  reached 
out,  in  dusky  dimness,  from  beyond  the  farm 
road  toward  infinity,  has  sunk  below  the  horizon, 
it  has  become  as  if  it  had  never  been.  The  field 
of  corn,  the  potato  patch,  the  flower  garden, 


88  ON  BEING  ILL 

the  gravelled  walk,  the  porch,  have  also  become 
part  of  uncharted  darkness,  merged  into  chaos; 
even  hall,  stairway,  the  whole  house  outside  the 
sickroom  door,  is  now  beyond  the  further  edge 
of  twilight  consciousness.  The  sick  man's 
physical  universe  has  shrunk  to  a  bedroom,  it 
is  circumscribed  by  four  narrow  walls,  but  it 
serves  all  the  purposes  of  the  mightiest  universe, 
it  fills  his  thoughts,  and  presents  those  marks  of 
order  and  intelligibility  that  distinguish  the 
tract  within  the  intellectual  reach  of  the  human 
mind  from  whatever  may  lie  beyond.  It  has 
advantages  over  any  larger  universe  in  that  the 
smaller  it  is,  the  more  intelligible,  the  more  home 
like  it  becomes,  and  in  that  it  stands  more  clearly 
in  definite  relations  to  the  sick  man's  inner  self. 

The  central  point  of  interest  is  his  bed.  The 
white  coverlet  lies  like  new-fallen  snow.  Under 
it  his  legs,  two  long  projections  with  which  he 
appears  to  have  little  or  nothing  to  do,  stretch 
away  down  towards  the  foot  of  the  bed,  like 
mountain  ranges  on  a  map  of  physical  geography; 
while  the  light  covering  falls  away  in  gentle 
slopes  on  either  side.  Then  the  brass  bedpost 
catches  his  eye.  It  draws  to  itself  more  than 
its  share  of  light,  and,  as  if  the  words  Fiat  Lux 
had  been  spoken  directly  to  it,  radiates  brazenly. 


ON  BEING  ILL  89 

But  an  object  near  by,  on  the  table  at  the  foot 
of  the  bed,  is  far  more  interesting.  A  long  green 
stalk  rises  from  a  yellow  vase,  and  stands  very 
tall  and  straight  in  its  pride  at  carrying  the 
perfect  flower  that,  with  its  snowy  petals  half 
disclosed,  half  folded  as  if  to  hold  their  fragrance 
in,  crowns  the  green  stem.  This  white  rose  is  a 
triumphant  issue  of  the  efforts  of  Nature,  of 
her  experiments  in  valley  and  meadow,  in  sun 
shine  and  in  shade,  the  achievement  of  the  noble 
collaboration  of  root  and  stalk,  of  leaves  and 
blossoms. 

If  Nature  had  aimed  to  produce  color  only,  or 
fragrance  only,  it  would  be  seemingly  intelligible 
that  man  should  chance  to  be  pleased  by  the 
color  or  by  the  fragrance;  but  according  to 
what  doctrine  of  chances  should  a  man  be  charmed 
not  only  by  the  color  and  the  fragrance,  but 
also  by  the  exquisite  texture  of  the  petals  that 
fits  them  for  no  rougher  office  than  to  line  a 
fairy's  cradle  ?  Each  petal  opens  at  the  touch 
of  light,  and  then,  as  if  the  caress  of  the  full 
sunlight  were  too  poignant,  covers  itself  with 
shadows  and  half-tones. 

In  a  state  of  health  one  accepts  a  rose  as  part 
of  the  great  adventure,  not  less  wonderful,  nor 
more,  than  all  the  other  elements  that  go  to 


90  ON  BEING  ILL 

make  up  that  adventure.  But  the  mind,  half 
set  free  from  the  emaciated  body,  cannot  take 
the  rose  merely  so.  Why  is  it  that  Milton 
plants  roses  thick  in  his  Garden  of  Eden ;  why 
does  Dante  make  the  saints  and  angels  of  God 
but  petals  in  the  vast  rose  of  the  heaven  of 
heavens  ?  Why  is  there  never  a  lover  that  does 
not  compare  his  mistress  to  a  rose  ?  Can  it  be 
by  chance  that  the  rose  and  the  soul  of  man 
are  matched  so  melodiously  ?  And  as  the  rose 
has  travelled  along  its  vegetable  path,  trusting 
to  the  wind  or  to  the  honey  bee  for  transporta 
tion  to  a  kindlier  soil,  is  it  chance  that  has  con 
ferred  upon  her  this  combination  of  color, 
fragrance  and  texture,  and  brought  her  as  it 
were  to  a  trysting  place  with  the  soul  of  man, 
who,  on  his  part,  having  traced  his  way  through 
millions  of  years  down  a  dark  path,  has  attained 
the  senses  that  are  ravished  by  that  union  of 
color,  fragrance,  and  texture  ?  What  service  has 
the  rose  rendered  to  our  ancestors  that  we  should 
admire  it  beyond  all  rational  measure  ?  Did  it 
feed  them,  clothe  them,  warm  them,  or  serve  to 
deck  some  otherwise  unattractive  maid  and  win 
for  her  a  wooer  ?  Did  our  ancestors,  whether 
beasts  or  human  progenitors  of  retreating  skull 
and  tusklike  teeth,  breathe  in  its  beauty  and 


ON  BEING  ILL  91 

take  fresh  courage  for  the  battle  of  life  ?  Can 
it  be  by  chance  that  man  has  come  to  find  in  a 
flower  the  great  symbol  of  Beauty  ?  Why  is 
not  the  fruit  more  beautiful  to  him  than  the 
flower  ?  Why  not  the  vegetable  than  the  fruit  ? 
Why  not  the  fish  than  the  vegetable,  or  a  lamb 
chop  most  beautiful  of  all  ?  The  rose  does  not 
help  the  human  being,  even  to-day,  in  the  struggle 
for  life;  rather  she  is  a  hinderance.  She  stands 
there  in  the  vase,  and  as  the  sick  man's  delighted 
eye  follows  the  contour  of  leaf  and  petal,  and 
dwells  upon  the  dainty  setting  of  the  corolla  in 
the  calyx  (as  if  the  soul  of  a  bird  had  alighted 
on  the  soul  of  a  nest),  she  asserts :  "To  gaze 
on  Beauty  is  the  nobleness  of  life."  Is  this 
chance?  Or  is  there  some  element  in  the  spirit 
of  man  that  renders  him  as  he  proceeds  upon  his 
upward  journey  more  sensitive  to  beauty,  and, 
as  time  goes  on,  will  cause  him  to  perceive  beauty 
lying  thick  about  him,  in  flower,  leaf,  pebble, 
waterdrop,  in  every  clod  of  common  earth,  and 
so  at  last  establish  harmonious  relations  between 
him  and  all  that  is  ?  Is  this  the  end  to  which 
Life  consciously  aspires,  the  argument  to  justify 
creation  and  existence  ? 

To  the  spirit,  still  uncertain  of  long  sojourn  in 
its  fleshly  dress,  the  beauty  of  the  rose  is  a  tor- 


92  ON  BEING  ILL 

menting  riddle.  The  spirit  keeps  asking  :  "Why, 
why  am  I  imprisoned  in  this  compound  of  dust, 
condemned  to  suffer  when  this  insensible  machine 
goes  wrong  ?  What  whimsical  power  commanded 
me,  a  spirit,  to  be  conscious  of  physical  malad 
justment?"  And  the  rose  keeps  answering: 
"You  are  also  conscious  of  me." 

Is  knowledge  of  the  rose  a  piece  of  mystical 
experience,  a  communion  with  a  symbol  of  pure 
beauty,  a  partial  and  momentary  loss  of  self  in 
the  consciousness  of  that  which  is  Life's  explana 
tion  ?  The  mystics,  bound  by  the  words  and 
phrases  of  human  experience,  use  images  of 
light,  of  sound,  of  sweetness;  but  in  all  they 
say,  they  merely  try  to  express  what  the  rose 
is  to  the  sick  man.  Is  every  sick  man  a  mystic  ? 
Does  illness  dilapidate  the  blocks  of  physical 
dogma  out  of  which  is  built  the  edifice  of  daily 
life  ?  Does  it  dissolve  the  mortar  of  the  matter- 
of-fact,  dispel  the  illusions  of  habitual  action, 
and  leave  the  soul  face  to  face  with  symbols  of 
something  toward  which  all  life  aspires  ? 

Ill 

A  little  beyond  the  foot  of  the  bed  come  the 
fireplace  and  mantlepiece.  The  small  dimensions 
of  the  room  leave  but  a  narrow  passage  for  a 


ON   BEING  ILL  93 

white-capped,  white-aproned,  ministrant,  who 
walks  to  and  fro  with  noiseless  steps,  and,  when 
the  clock  strikes  the  hour,  brings  a  spoonful  of 
some  medicinal  potion  which  custom,  or  fashion, 
or  hope,  foists  upon  the  sick.  The  wood  fire 
preaches  mortality,  as  it  resolves  into  their  ele 
ments  the  logs  of  oak,  chestnut,  and  birch  which 
cost  nature  so  much  pains  to  endow  with  life. 
But  another  symbol  withdraws  the  wandering 
eye  from  the  fire.  On  the  mantlepiece,  leaning 
against  the  wall,  there  is  a  rude  picture,  painted 
on  copper  in  archaic,  Flemish  style.  The  subject 
is  the  crucifixion.  At  the  foot  of  the  cross  Mary 
stands  erect,  John  with  bowed  head  close  by, 
and  hovering  in  the  air  little  truncated  cherubs 
catch  in  golden  chalices  the  drops  of  blood  that 
fall  from  the  dead  Christ's  wounds.  At  first 
one  jumps  to  the  conclusion  that  this  scene, 
acknowledged  throughout  Christendom  as  the  su 
preme  human  tragedy,  has  been  always  misunder 
stood.  The  minds  of  men  have  been  preoccupied 
by  the  ecclesiastical  interpretation,  which  regards 
the  Crucified  Christ  as  the  centre  of  the  tragedy, 
and  puts  at  the  climax  of  its  litany,  "By  Thy 
cross  and  passion."  The  spectacle  of  physical 
suffering,  especially  to  men  in  health,  wrings 
the  corporeal  sensibility,  and  in  the  case  of  finely 


94  ON   BEING  ILL 

tuned  natures  even  imprints  imitative  marks  in 
hands,  and  feet  and  side;  and  yet  a  far  deeper 
suffering  was  endured  at  the  foot  of  the  cross. 
Mary  is  the  centre  of  the  tragedy : 

Stabat  mater  dolorosa 
juxta  crucem  lacrimosa, 

dum  pendebat  filius. 
Cujus  animam  gementem 
contristantem  et  dolentem 

pertransivit  gladius. 

The  poet  knew  that  the  mother  was  the  greater 
sufferer,  for  a  sword  had  also  pierced  his  soul. 
She,  who  had  stored  up  in  her  heart  all  the  words 
of  her  little  boy,  all  the  sayings  of  her  eldest 
son,  her  beautiful  youth,  her  divine  leader  of 
men,  suffered  more  pain  than  nails  or  lance  have 
power  to  inflict.  Nevertheless  Mary  is  not  the 
centre  of  the  tragedy.  Christendom  is  right; 
instinctively  it  feels  that  the  figure  on  the  cross 
is  the  cynosure  of  human  interest. 

The  crucifixion  is  a  tragedy,  not  because  it 
represents  human  pain,  even  pain  undeserved, 
but  because  the  cross  passionately  asserts  a 
truth  at  the  heart  of  life.  There,  on  the  cross, 
hangs  a  body,  worshipped  by  Christendom  as 
the  body  of  one  who  in  himself  incorporated 
both  the  human  and  the  divine.  This  belief 


ON   BEING  ILL  95 

gives  a  superhuman  poignancy  to  the  crucifixion. 
The  belief  in  this  union  of  man  and  God  in  Christ 
crucified  is  true,  not  because  God  came  down 
from  his  celestial  throne  to  earth,  but  because 
man  is  the  highest  exponent  of  the  mysterious 
force  that  pulses  through  the  universe,  the  clear 
est  evidence  of  divinity.  Why  should  we  care 
whether  the  divine  is  human,  when  there  is  such 
abundant  witness  that  the  human  is  divine,  in 
all  that  we  demand  of  the  divine  ?  In  heroism, 
in  self-sacrifice,  in  the  power  of  loving  ? 

To  the  sick  man  the  divine  reveals  itself  in 
many  a  way,  it  fills  his  sickroom.  He  does  not 
ask  that  angels  shall  minister  to  him,  for  woman's 
hands  smooth  his  pillow,  bring  him  a  marvellous 
beverage,  called  milk,  and  a  delicate,  transparent, 
glittering  mass  of  bubbles  that  dance  in  rainbow 
colors  within  the  tumbler;  this  ambrosia  the 
prosaic  nurse  calls  whipped  up  white  of  egg,  as 
if  by  mere  words  she  could  exorcise  the  spirit 
of  poetry.  Poetry  invades  the  sickroom,  it 
sings  in  the  sunbeams,  it  leaps  with  the  leaping 
flames  of  the  fire,  and  snuggles  in  the  bosom  of 
the  rose.  Poetry  is  but  the  harbinger  of  the 
divine,  and  both  express  themselves  in  the  human 
voice.  If  the  forces  of  life  can  take  the  dust  of 
the  earth  and  compound  it  into  a  woman's  hands, 


96  ON  BEING  ILL 

and  that  miracle  does  not  convince  us  that  the 
forces  of  life  are  divine,  then  no  other  miracles 
or  revelations  will. 

The  divine  manifests  itself  in  beauty,  in  poetry, 
in  light,  in  the  rose,  in  human  affections.  But  in 
order  to  manifest  itself  the  divine  must  first 
exist;  and  the  crucifixion  testifies  that  that 
which  is  potentially  divine  can  only  become 
divine  through  pain.  This  is  the  teaching  of 
the  crucifixion,  and  this  is  more  readily  set  forth 
for  the  multitude  by  obvious  symbols  of  nails 
and  spear  thrust,  than  in  the  mother's  woe. 
The  crucifixion  is  the  supreme  allegory  of  the 
triumph  of  the  divine  through  pain,  the  symbol 
that  divinity  is  the  child  of  pain,  and  only  by 
the  ministration  of  pain  comes  to  birth. 

It  may  be  that  pain  is  a  process  of  purification, 
of  rarefaction  of  the  spirit,  and  so  enables  the 
spirit's  more  ethereal  part  to  rise,  leaving  behind 
that  which  clogs  and  impedes  its  flight.  This 
doctrine  has  long  been  held  with  respect  to  man, 

—  patiendo  fit  homo  melior,  —  and,  inasmuch  as 
man  is  but  an  integral  part  of  all  the  universe, 
how  can  a  law  be  true  for  him  if  it  be  not  also 
true  for  all  the  universe  ?     All  the  nervous  system 

—  if  the  answer  is  to  be  looked  for  in  the  colloca 
tion  of  cells  —  has  come  into  being  in  order  to 


ON  BEING  ILL  97 

increase  life,  to  enlarge  it,  to  render  it  more  sen 
sitive.  Why,  if  the  vibrations  that  cause  con 
sciousness  of  sound,  sight,  touch,  smell,  warmth, 
and  the  rest,  are  creating  mind,  or  enabling  mind 
to  possess  a  local  habitation,  and  if  pain  hovers 
about  these  vibrations,  as  a  mother  hovers  about 
her  children,  and  if  the  sterner  tempering  of 
character  is  wrought  by  pain,  what  can  we  do 
but  acknowledge  that  pain  is  mysteriously  at 
work  around,  above,  and  below  us,  guiding,  warn 
ing,  chastising,  blessing,  using  the  mind  of  man 
as  material  for  its  high  purpose  of  creating  the 
divine  ? 

This  is  but  the  humdrum  attempt  of  the  well 
man  to  express  in  words  the  thoughts  that  haunted 
him  when  sick.  While  he  lay  in  bed,  he  did  not 
need  the  intervention  of  words.  To  the  sick 
man  words  are  gross,  palpable  things,  they  come 
with  footfall  heavier  than  that  of  the  choreman 
who  fetches  wood  for  the  fire;  and  each  word, 
like  a  traveller  from  regions  of  ice  and  snow,  is 
wrapped  in  all  sorts  of  outer  garments  that 
conceal  the  thought  within.  They  disturb  the 
quiet  of  the  room ;  they  distort  and  caricature 
the  fine  Ariels  of  thought  that  hover  just  outside 
the  portals  of  comprehension,  and  would  come 
in,  were  words  delicate  enough  not  to  travesty 


98  ON  BEING  ILL 

them.  Thoughts  crowd  about,  eager  to  explain, 
longing  to  tell  the  sick  man  why  it  is  that  pain 
is  his  benefactor,  and  when  they  pass  through 
the  gates  of  comprehension,  and  are  stuffed  into 
words,  they  are  no  longer  Ariels,  but  mummers 
that  gesticulate,  make  faces,  and  mock  the 
listener.  This  is  the  vexation  the  sick  man 
endures;  he  feels  that  he  has  been  lifted  to 
purer  regions,  closer  to  the  meaning  that  for  him, 
at  least,  lies  hidden  behind  symbols,  —  behind 
the  crucifix,  the  rose,  a  woman's  hand,  behind 
light,  behind  love,  —  and  yet  he  can  never 
remember,  after  he  has  returned  to  earth,  just 
what  he  really  experienced  and  believed. 

But  if  he  turns  his  attention  from  that  which 
he  vainly  hopes  to  find  in  the  wallet  of  his  memory 
—  you  cannot  fetch  home  light  in  a  bag  —  to 
what  is  really  there,  he  finds  religion.  Then,  at 
last,  he  realizes  what  sickness  is  doing  for  him. 
The  healthy  man  has  no  time  for  religion;  he 
is  concerned  with  action.  He  must  plough  his 
field,  sow  his  corn,  hoe  his  potatoes,  and  trail 
the  honeysuckle  over  the  trellis.  His  mind  is 
busy  with  manifold  occupations,  hopes,  and  anx 
ieties.  The  theatre  of  life,  filling  the  stage  of 
his  universe,  takes  what  leisure  he  may  have. 
Or,  if  he  has  a  religion,  it  is  either  an  inheritance, 


ON  BEING  ILL  99 

like  his  grandfather's  clothes  fitted  for  a  man  of 
different  stature,  or  one  which  he  has  constructed 
out  of  fears  of  the  evil  that  may  befall,  or  out  of 
gratitude  for  evil  escaped.  The  sick  man  is  in 
quite  a  different  case.  His  stage  is  shrunk  to 
his  bedroom ;  his  drama  observes  the  unities. 
But  for  the  dumb  presence  of  the  nurse,  he  is 
alone,  alone  with  the  white  rose,  with  the  picture 
of  the  crucifixion,  with  his  body  and  the  hovering 
spirits  of  life  and  death.  His  drama  has  become 
as  simple  as  that  of  ^Eschylus,  and  he  drifts  off 
into  the  religious  mood,  a  mood  of  humble  cu 
riosity  concerning  life,  and  of  quest  for  a  loyalty 
which  shall  assert  his  need  of  holiness  to  be 
proof  that  his  soul  has  received  an  imprint,  no 
matter  how  faint,  from  the  presence  of  something 
holy. 

The  first  feeling  is  of  curiosity.  What  is  this 
life  that  floats,  like  the  Ark,  upon  a  waste  of 
inanimate  turbulence  ?  Everywhere  motion, 
everywhere  restlessness.  Is  it  only  in  this  chance 
combination  of  cells,  the  brain,  that  conscious 
ness  can  make  her  dwelling-place  ?  And  does 
my  consciousness  merely  reflect  for  a  time  the  mul 
titudinous  outside  world,  like  the  surface  of  a 
pool,  and  then,  as  when  the  water  sinks  away 
into  the  sands  beneath,  reflect  no  more  ?  Is  it 


100  ON  BEING  ILL 

all  mere  chance  —  the  white  rose,  the  crucifixion, 
the  Son  nailed  to  the  cross,  the  mother  in  agony 
upon  the  ground  beneath  ?  Were  these  things 
caused  by  chance,  or  are  there  forces  that  have 
a  purpose  and  tend  towards  an  end,  in  whose 
obedience  a  man  may  range  himself,  and  spend 
himself  in  an  effort  to  achieve  ?  Is  there  a  soul  of 
the  universe  with  which  his  soul  can  confederate  ? 

IV 

How  shall  a  man  go  about  to  find  the  soul  of 
the  universe  ?  What  shibboleth,  what  badge, 
shall  he  look  for  ?  What  do  we  mean  by  holi 
ness  ?  Is  it  a  mere  series  of  resignations,  the 
bidding  farewell  one  after  another  to  the  impulses 
of  life,  to  the  desires  of  the  body  and  the  mind  ? 
is  it  the  shaking  off  as  much  as  may  be  of  all 
corporeal  control  ?  Or,  is  it  an  abstraction  de 
duced  from  the  higher  pleasures  of  life,  from 
heroism,  from  the  exultations  of  sacrifice,  from 
the  joy  of  pure  thought  ?  Or  do  our  souls  come 
into  touch,  as  our  earth's  atmosphere  touches 
the  ethereal  space  beyond,  with  an  oversoul,  and 
become  hallowed  by  that  communion  ?  Or,  is 
the  upward  flight  of  the  soul  of  necessity  in  and 
through  a  region  that,  by  its  mere  remoteness 
from  the  friction  of  life,  inspires  the  human 


ON  BEING  ILL  IOI 

spirit  with  a  calm,  a  cool,  a  peace,  and  an  exal 
tation  ? 

Cut  off  from  all  action,  floating  down  a  stream 
of  incoherent  thoughts,  the  sick  man  comes  to 
feel  that  he  has  had  an  experience  of  holiness, 
like  a  pilgrim  who  has  visited  some  far  off  sanctu 
ary.  His  sick  room  has  become  a  shrine.  Here 
he  has  been  alone,  face  to  face,  with  the  one 
question  that  to  him  is  real  —  all  other  questions, 
all  other  aspects  of  things,  all  perplexities,  having 
been  swallowed  up  in  the  night  of  chaos  beyond 
the  limits  of  his  sickroom  universe. 

Illness  is  one  of  the  great  privileges  of  life. 
It  denies  the  common  value  of  things,  and  whispers 
that  man's  destiny  is  bound  up  with  transcenden 
tal  powers.  Illness  pares  and  lops  off  the  outer 
parts  of  life  and  leaves  us  with  the  essence  of  it. 
That  essence  gropes  blindly  for  its  fundamental 
relationships.  Is  this  consciousness  of  mine, — 
which  becomes,  when  shrunk  to  its  inmost  being, 
a  mere  spiritual  hunger  for  union  with  something 
other  than  itself,  an  isolated  drop  of  what  was 
once  an  ocean  of  being  ?  Does  it  imply  that  a 
universal  soul  has  disintegrated,  that  all  its  con 
stituent  elements  have  been  broken  up  and 
scattered,  each  still  impressed  with  the  memory 
that  they  were  once  parts  of  a  whole  ?  Or  is 


102  ON  BEING  ILL 

this  hunger  but  a.  sign  of  a.  new  awakening,  the 
first  movement  towards  a  combination,  a  union, 
that  shall  be  divine  ? 

Is  there  a  Creator  ?  Or,  is  the  idea  of  a  Creator 
the  product  of  superstitious  ignorance,  which  has 
subdued  the  human  soul  and  too  lightly  applied 
the  human  analogy  of  man  reshaping  matter  ? 
Who  would  willingly  admit  a  Creator  that  had 
created  this  universe,  with  all  its  suffering,  unless 
upon  the  supposition  that  He  was  so  cramped 
by  fate  or  dearth  of  material,  that  He  could  only 
create  it  of  warring  forces  and  dragons'  teeth  ? 
But  who  can  conceive  that  mechanical  forces, 
in  the  course  of  myriad  encounters  with  one 
another,  have  by  mere  accident  struck  out  the 
sparks  of  mind  ? 

And  why  this  eternal  commotion  ?  Is  all  this 
turmoil  the  struggle  of  a  baser  element  to  attain 
self-realization,  to  achieve  psychic  life  ?  Is  the 
whole  universe  seeking  more  life  and  fuller  ?  Or 
is  life  our  original  sin,  and  death  the  great  purifier  ? 
Is  it  beneficent  death  that  is  striving  to  cast  out 
the  vexing  seeds  of  life,  and  restore  a  universal 
calm  ?  Is  death  the  great  ocean  of  peace  to 
which  all  the  rivers  of  existence  flow  ?  Is  the 
blotting  out  of  the  universe  beyond  the  farm 
road,  the  reduction  of  it  to  a  small  sickroom, 


ON  BEING  ILL  103 

the  diminution  of  the  innumerable  dramatis 
persona  to  one  white-capped,  white-aproned 
nurse,  a  sample  of  the  divine  effort  towards 
simplicity  and  peace  ?  Is  consciousness  the  real 
ill  ?  Is  this  universal  commotion  harmless  till 
consciousness  arises  ?  Is  life  a  privilege,  a  duty, 
or  a  sin  ?  Why  should  our  ripples  disturb  the 
peace  of  God  ? 

While  these  fancies  come  and  go,  there  stands 
the  picture  of  the  crucifixion,  there  the  white 
rose  opens  its  petals  wider  hour  by  hour  as  if 
it  would  enfold  the  world  in  the  arms  of  its 
fragrance.  The  one  proclaims  that  there  is  a 
greater  nobleness  in  pain  than  the  inanimate  is 
capable  of,  and  the  other  asks:  "What  but  a 
beneficent  force  could  create  a  white  rose  or  a 
child  ?"  How  can  one  answer  them  ?  These 
are  witnesses  that  life  is  nobler  than  death.  The 
human  heart  does  beat  quicker  at  the  sight  of  a 
will  to  suffer,  it  does  rejoice  at  roses.  If  the 
propulsive  rhythm  of  the  universe  has  produced 
these  as  samples  of  its  purposes,  as  intimations 
of  its  goal,  does  not  the  whole  pattern  of  existence 
suddenly  seem  to  burst  out  as  if  written  in  letters 
of  light  ?  Right  and  wrong  cease  to  be  meaning 
less  terms ;  a  way  opens  to  act  in  unison  with  the 
motions  of  the  universe,  to  help,  no  matter  in 


104  ON  BEING  ILL 

how  trivial  a  respect,  its  upward  will  to  prevail ; 
the  music  of  hope  blows  in  the  wind,  sings  in 
April  showers,  murmurs  in  the  mysterious  noises 
of  the  woods,  in  the  voices  of  men,  in  the  anguish 
of  the  crucifix,  and  calls  upon  life  to  feel,  to  en 
joy,  and  to  suffer,  for  the  sake  of  more  life. 

In  this  way  the  sick  man's  thoughts  go  to  and 
fro.  The  drama  of  life  has  simplified  itself  into 
a  mystery  play.  Life  parleys  with  Death.  Death 
urges  peace  : 

Ease  after  toil,  port  after  stormy  seas, 

Peace  after  war,  death  after  life,  doth  greatly  please. 

But  in  the  soft,  caressing  insistence  upon  the 
pleasantness  of  peace,  how  can  we  tell  whether 
the  attraction  that  draws  us  on  to  lie  stiller  and 
stiller,  is  a  summing  up  of  all  the  arguments  that 
belittle  life  and  extol  death,  or  a  mere  self-in 
dulgence  of  the  body,  counselling  ease?  Does 
this  sweetly  magical  incantation,  under  which 
the  limbs  lie  quiet  and  the  hands  involuntarily 
clasp  themselves  on  the  breast,  come  from  the 
body  or  the  mind  ?  And  is  remembrance  of 
happy  days,  is  the  pleading  of  old  maxims  that 
condemn  a  physical  surrender  to  death,  is  the 
desire  to  worship  a  god  of  the  living,  a  mere 
psychical  mechanism  set  in  motion  by  the  heart, 


ON  BEING  ILL  105 

beating  rhythmically  to  the  oscillations  that  run 
through  the  physical  universe  ?  It  is  all  a  re 
ligious  mystery  play.  Life  is  religious,  Death  is 
religious.  The  question,  "Shall  I  live  or  shall 
I  die,"  resolves  itself  into  a  question  of  loyalty. 
Is  life  or  death  our  God  ? 

V 

The  return  from  illness  to  health  is  like  coming 
up  from  a  dive,  supposing  the  time  from  when  the 
swimmer  first  sees  light  through  the  water  until 
his  head  rises  to  the  surface  to  be  the  affair  of 
weeks.  The  change  in  physical  condition  may 
be  slow,  but  the  change  in  orientation  takes  place 
in  a  twinkling  and  is  complete.  The  eye  no  longer 
looks  down  into  unplumbed  deeps,  but  back  to 
ward  the  light  of  day ;  curiosity  for  the  ultimate 
yields  to  a  golden  memory  of  familiar  things,  — 
friends,  household  goods,  books,  barking  dogs, 
the  freshness  of  grass  and  trees.  The  body  has 
reasserted  itself.  The  dreaming  imagination  is 
dragged  away  from  its  goal  by  the  galloping 
senses.  Eye,  ear,  touch,  taste,  start  upon  a 
rampage.  Especially  does  the  appetite  for  food 
wax  furious,  discovering  itself  endowed  with 
power  to  transform  a  coddled  egg  into  something 
rich  and  strange,  and  to  illumine  chicken  broth 


106  ON  BEING  ILL 

with  a  charm  that  no  art  can  equal.  The  uni 
verse,  lately  shrunk  to  the  sickroom,  now  rises 
again,  like  the  Genie  out  of  the  bottle  in  which 
he  had  been  imprisoned ;  the  sickroom  becomes 
a  house  of  detention,  and  at  its  door,  as  in  a  sea- 
shell  clapped  to  the  ear,  the  convalescent  hearkens 
to  all  the  rumours  of  the  outer  world. 

It  is  the  very  completeness  of  the  body's 
triumph  that  constitutes  the  weakness  of  its 
permanent  victory.  The  exultation  with  which 
it  mocks  the  dreamy  imagination  is  too  plainly 
the  work  of  recovering  nerves,  of  reinvigorated 
muscles,  of  hungry  physical  organs.  It  is  a 
triumph  of  force,  not  of  reason.  Health  is  not 
magnanimous ;  it  prosecutes  its  victory  relent 
lessly,  as  if  it  feared  to  leave  a  single  dreamy 
thought  unquenched.  Its  victory  proves  noth 
ing  except  that  we  are  living  things.  Perhaps 
the  dead  rejoice  in  death,  as  greatly  as  the  living 
do  in  life. 

Convalescence,  however,  is  a  pleasant  time. 
Away  with  Thomas-a-Kempis,  Obermann,  Amiel, 
away  with  anchorites  and  monks,  bats  that 
haunt  the  chill  vaults  of  the  antechamber 
of  Death. 

Come,  thou  goddess  fair  and  free, 
In  heaven  yclept  Euphrosyne ! 


ON  BEING  ILL  107 

The  sick  man  on  his  path  back  to  life  has  a  vora 
cious  appetite  for  the  humour,  the  gayety,  the 
light  follies  of  life.  He  bids  the  nurse  take  away 
the  Bible  and  Paradise  Lost,  which  during  his 
dark  days  he  had  kept  at  his  elbow;  he  asks  for 
Punch,  Pickwick,  La  Rotisserie  de  la  Reine  Pedau- 
que,  Don  Quixote.  Mirth,  even  in  its  ruder 
livery,  appears  as  the  most  desirable  of  human 
emotions.  FalstafF  comes  habited  in  a  magical 
radiance,  as  if  jollity  were  humanity's  noblest 
attribute.  And,  indeed,  if  the  partisans  of  health 
are  right,  there  is  no  very  good  reason  for  suppos 
ing  that  it  is  not. 

The  convalescent's  ears  crave  the  crowing  of 
the  cock,  the  cluck  of  hens,  the  grunt  of  pigs; 
even  the  expletives  of  the  passing  teamster  sound 
with  a  rough  music,  chiming  in  with  the  universal 
chorus  of  the  world's  noises  that  sing  a  paean  in 
praise  of  life. 

Life  seizes  upon  every  means  of  appeal  within 
its  power  to  lure  the  sick  man  back  from  the 
worship  of  death.  There  is  something  almost 
comic  in  its  solicitude  lest  it  should  lose  one 
adorer.  No  coquette  —  not  Beatrice  nor  Ce- 
limene  —  ever  took  such  pains,  adjusted  ribbons, 
ringlets,  ruffles,  lifted  or  dropped  her  eyes,  turned 
a  slim  neck,  or  smiled  or  sighed,  with  a  tithe  of 


108  ON  BEING  ILL 

the  flirtatiousness  of  life.  Each  man  fancies 
himself  an  Antony,  and  the  spirit  of  Life,  a  very 
Cleopatra,  head  over  heels  enamoured  of  him; 
he  yields  unconditionally  to  her  bewitching  lure. 

At  last  the  nurse  goes,  the  doctor  takes  his 
leave,  the  medicine  bottles  are  put  on  the  closet 
shelf,  the  patient  is  up  and  about,  and  then, 
thoroughly  subdued  to  the  humours  of  Life,  — 
for  Life  is  April  when  it  woos,  December  when  it 
weds  —  he  is  turned  out  of  doors,  back  to  the 
dull  daily  routine,  back  to  hoeing,  ploughing, 
weeding,  back  to  haggling,  buying  and  selling, 
back  to  the  world  of  living  men.  Life,  the  Circe, 
who  looked  so  fair,  has  bewitched  him,  metamor 
phosed  him  from  a  spirit  into  an  animal,  put  her 
collar  on  him  and  turned  him  loose,  to  run  on  all 
fours  like  other  animals  after  the  things  that 
seem  to  him  desirable. 

Even  then,  in  moments  of  leisure,  in  twilight 
intervals  between  the  work  of  day  and  the  hours 
of  sleep,  or,  when  on  a  starry  night  he  leans  forth 
from  his  window,  as  St.  Augustine  and  Monica 
leaned  from  the  window  of  their  inn  at  Ostia 
to  brood  over  the  text,  "Enter  thou  into  the  joy 
of  thy  Lord,"  —  in  such  moments  he  broods  upon 
the  thoughts  that  swept  over  him  when  sick,  and 
he  muses  upon  the  strangeness  of  life  and  wonders 


ON  BEING  ILL  109 

whether  he  did  not  see  more  clearly  with  his 
heavy  eyes,  and  apprehend  more  clearly  with  his 
fevered  brow,  when  he  lay  upon  the  bed  in  his 
sickroom,  than  now  when  busy  with  the  rough 
activities  of  life. 


VI 

THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

PROLOGUE 

THE  traveller  looked  about  him.  The  glorious 
sunlight  of  the  preceding  day  had  gone;  the 
glittering  greenery  that  had  frolicked  with  the 
breeze  was  no  longer  to  be  seen.  The  trees  along 
the  roadside  were  gnarled,  stunted,  sombre;  the 
bushes  were  scarcely  more  than  brambles.  Bleak 
ness  covered  everything.  Grass,  such  as  it  was, 
showed  itself  only  in  patches ;  the  soil  was  stony, 
the  air  chill. 

The  traveller  wrapped  his  cloak  about  him. 
Whether  his  senses  were  sharpened  by  the  dreari 
ness  of  his  surroundings,  or  whether  they  instinc 
tively  sought  a  new  object  for  their  attention,  he 
could  not  say;  but  be  became  aware,  gradually, 
—  as  a  sound  sleeper  slowly  wakes  to  the  things 
about  his  bed,  —  of  some  one  beside  him,  travel 
ling  the  same  way,  taking,  it  seemed,  even  steps 
with  himself.  He  felt  no  surprise,  but  rather  as 
no 


THE   HOUSE  OF   SORROW  III 

if  he  were  picking  up  a  memory  that  had  been 
lying  just  under  the  surface  of  consciousness,  — 
as  if  he  ought  to  have  known  that  some  one  had 
been  beside  him  for  an  indefinite  time. 

The  traveller  walked  on  for  a  while  in  silence ; 
and  then,  overcome  half  by  curiosity,  half  by  a 
mixture  of  resentment  and  suspicion,  turned  and 
demanded  a  little  curtly  where  the  other  was 
going. 

"  I  am  going  your  way,"  replied  the  stranger, 
and  the  two  walked  on  together,  side  by  side. 

"I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  the  traveller,  "but  I 
know,  as  I  am  immersed  in  my  own  thoughts, 
that  I  cannot  be  an  acceptable  companion.  We 
had  better  journey  singly;  I  will  go  ahead  or  fall 
behind,  as  you  choose." 

"I  prefer  to  keep  even  pace,"  answered  the 
other. 

Hardly  knowing  whether  or  not  to  be  offended, 
the  traveller  hesitated  ;  should  he  go  ahead  or  fall 
behind  ?  But,  though  he  could  not  tell  why,  he 
did  neither ;  he  kept  on  the  same  road  at  the  same 
pace,  step  by  step,  with  his  companion. 

The  landscape  grew  still  more  desolate ;  the 
earth  seemed  hostile  to  vegetable  life.  A  rare 
tree,  here  and  there,  shook  its  barren  branches ; 
prickly  things  rendered  the  walking  difficult. 


112  THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

The  traveller  thought  to  himself :  "  I  will  turn 
round  and  go  back,  and  so  I  shall  both  leave  this 
detestable  place  and  escape  from  this  importunate 
companion." 

The  stranger  spoke  up :  "  No,  let  us  keep  on 
together." 

The  traveller  started,  and  making  a  feeble 
attempt  to  smile,  said,  "  You  seem  to  be  a  mind- 
reader."  He  decided  to  stop  at  once;  neverthe 
less  he  continued  to  keep  on  the  same  road  at  the 
same  pace.  Then  he  thought,  forgetting  that  he 
had  not  spoken  aloud,  "  It  was  not  polite  in  me  to 
let  him  know  that  I  wished  to  shake  myself  free 
of  his  company.  I  will  quietly  turn  off  to  the 
right  or  left." 

"  No,  let  us  keep  on  the  same  road,"  repeated 
the  stranger. 

At  this  the  traveller  contained  himself  no  longer, 
but  burst  out,  almost  angrily,  "Who  are  you  ?" 

"I  am  the  Spirit  of  Life,"  answered  the  other; 
"you  and  I  are  journeying  together." 

The  traveller  did  not  understand  what  the 
stranger  meant;  but  he  was  aware  of  a  bitter 
chill  in  the  air  and  of  still  greater  desolation  all 
about,  and  he  determined  to  cast  manners  to  the 
wind  and  run  for  it ;  but  no,  his  feet  kept  on  the 
same  way,  at  the  same  pace. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW  113 

"Be  not  impatient,"  said  his  companion,  "this 
is  our  road." 

The  chill  struck  through  the  traveller's  cloak, 
his  fingers  trembled  with  cold,  but  he  kept  on. 
As  they  crossed  the  brow  of  a  low  hill  they  saw  a 
great,  gloomy  building  lying  before  them.  The 
traveller  thought  of  fortresses  and  prisons  in  for 
eign  lands  that  he  had  read  of. 

"I  shall  turn  here  and  go  back,"  he  cried, 
amazed  at  the  foolish  terror  of  his  imagination. 

"We  must  go  on,"  replied  the  stranger. 

They  were  now  close  under  the  shadow  of  the 
building. 

"What  is  this  abhorrent  place?"  asked  the 
traveller. 

"This,"  answered  his  companion,  taking  the 
traveller's  arm,  "is  the  House  of  Sorrow." 

The  traveller  felt  a  sword  pierce  his  heart,  yet 
his  footsteps  did  not  fail;  for,  against  his  will, 
the  Spirit  of  Life  bore  him  up.  He  went  on  with 
even  step,  and  the  two  crossed  the  threshold. 

I 

They  that  have  experienced  a  great  sorrow  are 
born  again.  The  world  they  are  now  in  is  quite 
different  from  their  old  world.  In  that  earlier 
world  they  lived  upon  terms  of  household  familiar- 


114  THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

ity  with  Joy  and  Felicity ;  now  they  must  lie  down 
by  the  side  of  Sorrow  and  eat  with  Sorrow  beside 
them  at  the  board.  Outward  things  may  assert 
their  identity  to  eye,  to  ear,  to  touch,  but  outward 
things  cannot  deceive  the  spirit  within ;  the 
House  of  Sorrow  is  strange,  all  its  furniture  is 
strange,  and  the  newcomer  must  learn  anew  how 
to  live. 

The  first  lesson  is  to  accept  the  past  as  a  beau 
tiful  day  that  is  done,  as  the  loveliness  of  a  rose 
that  has  withered  away.  The  object  of  our  yearn 
ing  has  passed  from  the  world  of  actual  contacts 
into  the  world  of  art.  Memory  may  paint  the 
picture  as  it  will,  drop  out  all  shadows  and  catch 
the  beauty  of  our  exquisite  loss  in  all  the  golden 
glow  of  human  happiness.  There,  within  the 
shrine  prepared  by  Sorrow,  that  picture  will  ever 
refresh  us  and  bless  us.  Evil  cannot  touch  it,  nor 
ill-will,  nor  envy,  nor  sordid  care;  only  our  own 
faithlessness,  our  own  acceptance  of  unworthy 
things,  can  stain  the  freshness  of  its  beauty.  Sor 
row  has  constituted  us  the  sacristans  of  this 
shrine;  on  us  rests  the  care  of  this  pictured 
relic,  and,  unless  we  suffer  motes  and  beams 
to  get  in  our  eyes,  it  will  remain  as  bright  in 
the  sanctuary  of  memory  as  in  the  sunshine  of 
earthly  life. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW  115 

The  second  lesson  is  to  receive  from  Sorrow  the 
gift  that  we  have  all  asked  for,  begged  for,  a  thou 
sand  times.  We  have  felt  the  oppression  of  petty 
things,  we  have  been  caught  in  the  nets  of  gross- 
ness,  we  have  suffered  ourselves  to  become  cap 
tives  and  servants  to  the  common  and  the  mean, 
till,  weary  with  servitude,  we  have  cried  out, 
"Oh,  that  I  might  rescue  my  soul!"  And  now 
the  work  of  deliverance  is  accomplished  and  our 
souls  are  free.  Tyranny  has  fallen  from  our  necks. 
Vulgar  inclinations  have  lost  their  ancient  glamour, 
and  the  baser  appetites  shiver  in  their  nakedness. 
Our  wish  has  been  granted ;  the  prison  doors  are 
open  wide,  we  may  pursue  with  all  our  strength, 
with  all  the  resolution  we  can  summon,  the  things 
which  we,  when  bound,  believed  that  we  longed 
for. 

The  third  gift  of  Sorrow  is  that  she  will  not 
suffer  us  to  put  up  with  artificial  lights.  We 
had  been  content  with  the  candle-light  of  sensu 
ous  things,  letting  our  souls  float  idly  on  the  clouds 
of  chance  experience ;  we  had  accepted  life  as  a 
voyage  down  a  magic  river  of  random  happenings, 
satisfied  with  such  beacons  as  guarded  our  tem 
poral  prosperity.  But  Sorrow,  with  one  sweep  of 
her  hand,  has  extinguished  all  those  lights,  and 
robbed  the  things  of  sense  of  all  their  shimmering. 


Il6  THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

Sorrow  has  shown  us  that  we  live  in  the  dark ;  and 
no  great  harm  has  been  done,  for  we  no  longer  care 
to  see  the  flickering  lights  that  once  flared  about 
our  heads  with  so  deceptive  a  glow.  Sorrow  has 
given  us  a  yearning  for  inextinguishable  light.  All 
is  dark;  but  all  darkness  is  one  great  supplication 
for  light  which  cannot  be  quenched.  Shadow, 
mystery,  blackness,  the  outer  and  the  inner  courts 
of  chaos,  all  echo  Sorrow's  cry  for  light. 

So  the  soul  into  which  the  iron  has  entered, 
amazed  and  offended  by  the  bitterness  of  agony, 
turns  to  find  some  light,  some  principle,  whose 
shining  shall  illume  for  her  these  random  happen 
ings  of  joy  and  sorrow  which  make  up  what  we 
call  life,  whose  wisdom  shall  satisfy  her  passionate 
demand  for  some  explanation  why  she  should 
have  been  conjured  up  out  of  nothingness,  to  be 
caressed  and  flattered  for  a  season,  and  then 
stabbed  to  the  heart.  What  is  this  universe  that 
treats  us  so  ?  What  animates  it  ?  What  is  it 
trying  to  do  ?  What  is  its  attitude  toward  man  ? 

Who  shall  explain  these  things  ?  We  have  lost 
the  support  of  the  Christian  dogmas,  and  we  have 
no  new  staff  to  lean  upon ;  we  have  strayed  from 
the  old  road  of  hope,  and  we  do  not  find  a  new 
road.  What  can  science  or  philosophy  do  for  us, 
—  science  that  pays  so  little  heed  to  the  soul, 


THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW  117 

philosophy  that  pays  so  little  heed  to  grief?  We 
must  shift  for  ourselves  and  see  what  we  can  find. 
Happiness  left  us  content  with  happiness,  but 
Sorrow  bids  us  rise  up  and  seek  something  divine. 
The  first  act  must  be  to  lift  our  eyes  from 
Sorrow,  cast  memory  loose,  put  on  the  magic  cap 
of  indifference  and  forgetfulness,  and  look  out  as 
from  a  window  upon  the  phenomena  that  may 
chance  to  meet  the  eye,  and  see  whether  from  the 
sample  we  can  infer  a  pattern,  interwoven  with  a 
thread  of  hope,  for  the  whole  fabric. 

II 

I  look  at  the  universe  as  it  presents  itself  to  me 
this  morning,  as  if  I,  for  the  first  time,  were  making 
its  acquaintance.  I  find  myself  in  a  pleasant  room. 
Golden  light,  pouring  in  at  the  window,  irradiates 
shining  breakfast  things.  A  wonderful  odour 
greets  my  nostrils ;  a  steaming  fragrance,  followed 
by  a  delicious  taste,  quickens  my  whole  being. 
Next,  round  yellow  fruit  is  presented  to  me, 
smelling  as  if  it  remembered  all  its  blossoming 
origins  or  had  packed  its  rind  with  ambrosia  in 
the  garden  of  the  Hesperides.  Added  to  these  is  a 
delicious  bread,  rich  Rembrandtesque  brown 
without,  ripe  yellow  within,  a  princely  kind  of 
bread,  which  they  tell  me  is  called  Johnny-cake. 


Il8  THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

Breakfast  done,  I  walk  out  into  an  unroofed 
azure  palace  of  light.  Upon  the  ground  a  multi 
tude  of  little  green  stalks  intertwine  with  each 
other  to  keep  my  feet  from  touching  the  soil  be 
neath  ;  mighty  giants,  rooted  to  earth,  hold  up  a 
hundred  thousand  leaves  to  shelter  me  from  the 
excess  of  golden  glory  that  illumines  the  azure 
palace;  the  leaves  rustle,  either  for  the  music's 
sake  or  to  let  me  feel  their  sentiment  of  kinship. 
Further  on,  little  beautiful  things,  which  have  re 
nounced  locomotion,  —  recognizing  that  they  have 
found  their  appointed  places  and  are  happy  there, 
like  the  Lady  Pia  in  the  lower  heaven  of  Paradise, 
—  waft  floral  benedictions  to  me.  And  about 
them  hover  winged  flowers  that  spread  their  petals 
to  the  breeze  and  flit  from  fragrance  to  fragrance. 
Into  a  honey-laden  cornucopia,  a  passionate 
presence,  its  wings  humming  in  wild  ecstasy,  dips 
its  bill,  while  the  sunlight  burnishes  the  jewelled 
magnificence  of  its  plumage. 

A  troop  of  young  creatures,  far  more  wonderful 
than  these,  passes  by,  with  glancing  eyes  and  rosy 
cheeks,  making  sweetest  music  of  words  and 
laughter.  These,  they  tell  me,  are  children,  and 
they  say  that  there  are  many  of  them,  and  that  I, 
too,  was  once  a  child.  I  laugh  at  this  preposter 
ous  flattery. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW  119 

Another  being,  well-nigh  ethereal,  a  naiad  per 
haps,  or  the  imagining  of  some  kindly  god,  trips  by. 
It  is  exquisite.  The  leaves  cast  their  shadows 
before  it;  the  flowers  tremble  for  pleasure. 
"What  is  it?"  I  whisper.  Some  one  answers 
carelessly:  "That  is  a  maiden." 

Then  another  young  creature  dances  by,  — 
head  erect,  all  animation,  the  breeze  blowing  its 
hair  back  from  what  must  be  a  temple  for  pure  and 
noble  thought  —  like  a  gallant  ship  beating  out 
to  sea.  This,  they  tell  me,  is  a  youth. 

I  walk  on  and  behold  many  goodly  things.  I 
hear  melodies  that  stir  yearnings  to  which  I  can 
give  no  name,  start  flashes  of  joy,  or  glimmering 
understandings  of  the  "deep  and  dazzling  dark 
ness"  that  surrounds  the  farthest  reaches  of  ter 
restrial  light.  I  am  told  that  there  are  men, 
called  poets,  who  have  built  a  palace  out  of  their 
crystal  imaginations,  where  life  and  its  doings  are 
depicted  in  a  thousand  ways,  sometimes  as  in  a 
mirror,  trait  for  trait,  sometimes  glorified,  and  all 
in  varied  cadences  of  music.  And  I  am  told  that 
the  wonderful  things  which  greet  my  senses  —  dry 
land  and  its  fruitfulness,  ocean,  air,  clouds,  stars, 
and  sky  —  are  but  an  infinitesimal  fragment  of  an 
infinite  whole,  in  which  the  curious  mind  may 
travel  for  countless  ages  and  never  reach  the  end 


120  THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

of  eager  and  throbbing  questionings ;  that  there 
is  between  me  and  it  the  most  wonderful  of  all 
relations,  the  contact,  real  or  imaginary,  of  my 
consciousness  with  the  great  stream  of  phenomena 
that  passes  before  it,  and  that  this  relation  is  the 
source  of  never-ending  intellectual  pleasure. 

But  more  than  by  all  things  else  I  am  impressed 
by  the  sentiments  between  creatures  of  my  kind, 
between  mother  and  son,  father  and  daughter, 
husband  and  wife,  friend  and  friend,  a  wonderful 
mutual  attraction  which  makes  each  yield  his  will 
to  the  other  and  rouses  a  double  joy,  —  from 
securing  for  the  other  and  from  renouncing  for 
one's  self,  —  a  half-mystical  bond  that  holds  two 
together  as  gravitation  holds  terrestrial  things  to 
the  earth,  so  sweet,  so  strong,  so  delicate,  that  the 
imagination  cannot  rise  beyond  this  human  af 
fection  at  its  height. 

Such  is  the  fragment  of  the  universe  which  pre 
sents  itself  at  this  moment  to  my  consciousness. 
Bewildered  by  wonders  heaped  on  wonders,  I 
cry  out  triumphantly,  "Is  there  not  evidence  of 
friendliness  to  man  here?" 

Ill 

But  men  of  science  answer,  No.  The  cause  or 
causes  behind  all  that  exists,  they  say,  are  neither 


THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW  121 

friendly  nor  unfriendly ;  they  are  unconscious,  in 
different,  inexorable ;  they  act  willy  nilly.  They 
are  blind  forces.  The  attitude  that  man  must 
hold  toward  them  is  an  attitude  neither  of  rever 
ence  nor  worship ;  he  must  be  wary,  ever  on  his 
guard,  and  quick  with  intellectual  curiosity.  And 
Science  gives  names  and  more  names  to  every  move 
ment,  to  every  aspect,  of  the  manifestations  of 
force.  And  then  when  Science  has  defined  and 
enumerated,  and  redefined  and  reenumerated  to 
its  heart's  content,  it  expects  us  to  look  up  in 
wonder  and  be  grateful,  as  if  names  and  defini 
tions  brought  with  them  health  and  happiness. 
We  do  wonder,  but  we  can  feel  no  gratitude.  We 
follow,  as  best  we  can,  the  teachings  of  Science. 
We  acknowledge  our  incompetence,  our  ignorance, 
our  inability  to  appreciate  what  we  are  taught. 
But  to  us  an  enumeration  of  processes  and  stages 
does  not  seem  to  be  an  explanation ;  that  enumera 
tion  sounds  as  hollow  to  us  as  if  science  were  to 
explain  our  personal  existences  by  recounting 
every  step  our  feet  have  taken  since  we  first  set 
foot  to  floor.  Moreover,  men  of  science  bewilder 
us  by  their  respect,  pushed  almost  to  obsequious 
ness,  for  bigness  and  littleness,  for  nearness  and 
distance,  for  chemical  energy  and  physical  rest 
lessness.  Why  should  consciousness  hold  its 


122  THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

breath  before  the  very  great  or  the  very  little, 
why  should  it  duck  and  bend  before  unconscious 
energy  ?  And  where  is  the  explanation  or  under 
standing  of  our  two  worlds,  more  real  to  us  than 
ponderable  matter  or  restless  energy,  our  world 
of  happiness  and  our  world  of  sorrow  ? 

We  turn  for  enlightenment  to  the  Spirit  of  Life ; 
but  the  Spirit  of  Life  answers : 

"My  concern  is  with  life,  not  with  knowledge." 

"Whom,  then,  shall  we  ask  ?" 

"Ask  Pain  and  ask  Love/'  replies  the  Spirit 
of  Life. 

Like  little  Jack  Horner,  science  pulls  out  its 
plums,  —  electricity,  radium,  the  chemical  union 
of  elements,  the  multiplication  of  cells,  —  and, 
like  Jack,  congratulates  itself.  But  to  the  inmates 
of  the  House  of  Sorrow,  far  more  wonderful  than 
all  these  things,  far  more  mysterious,  and  de 
manding  subtler  thought,  is  human  affection. 
For  a  generation  past,  human  affection  has  been 
treated,  and  for  years  to  come  may  still  be  treated, 
as  the  superfluous  product  of  physico-chemical 
energies.  The  scientific  mind,  elated  by  its  vic 
tories,  bivouacs  on  the  old  fields  of  battle.  But 
the  real  interest  in  atom  and  cell  lies  in  the  human 
consciousness,  and  the  interest  in  consciousness 
lies  in  the  human  affections.  In  themselves  elec- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW  123 

trons  and  cells  are  neither  wonderful  nor  interest 
ing;  they  are  merely  strange,  and  can  claim  only 
the  attention  due  to  strangers.  But  human  love 
is  of  boundless  interest  to  man,  and  should  have  the 
pious  devotion  of  the  wisest  and  most  learned  men. 

Science  proceeds  as  if  the  past  were  the  home 
of  explanation ;  whereas  the  future,  and  the  future 
alone,  holds  the  key  to  the  mysteries  of  the  present. 
When  the  first  cell  divided,  the  meaning  of  that 
division  was  to  be  discovered  in  the  future,  not  in 
the  past;  when  some  prehuman  ancestor  first 
uttered  a  human  sound,  the  significance  of  that 
sound  was  to  be  interpreted  by  human  language, 
not  by  apish  grunts ;  when  the  first  plant  showed 
solicitude  for  its  seed,  the  interest  of  that  solici 
tude  lay  in  the  promise  of  maternal  affection. 
Things  must  be  judged  in  the  light  of  the  coming 
morning,  not  of  the  setting  stars. 

It  is  not  the  past  which,  like  an  uncoiling  spring, 
pushes  us  on;  creation  faces  the  future,  and  is 
drawn  onward  by  an  irresistible  attraction.  "For 
though  it  be  a  maxim  in  the  schools,"  says  Thomas 
Traherne,  "that  there  is  no  love  of  a  thing  unknown, 
yet  I  have  found  that  things  unknown  have  a 
secret  influence  on  the  soul,  and,  like  the  centre  of 
the  earth  unseen,  violently  attract  it.  We  love 
we  know  not  what.  ...  As  iron  at  a  distance  is 


124  THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

drawn  by  the  loadstone,  there  being  some  invisi 
ble  communications  between  them,  so  is  there  in 
us  a  world  of  love  to  somewhat,  though  we  know 
not  what.  .  .  .  There  are  invisible  ways  of  con 
veyance  by  which  some  great  thing  doth  touch  our 
souls,  and  by  which  we  tend  to  it.  Do  you  not 
feel  yourself  drawn  by  the  expectation  and  desire 
of  some  Great  Thing  ?" 

Life  seems  to  have  differentiated  itself,  develop 
ing  a  Promethean  spirit  within  a  grosser  element. 
Life  as  a  whole  cares  only  to  preserve  itself,  it 
seeks  to  live,  it  cringes  and  will  accept  existence 
on  any  terms,  it  will  adapt  itself  to  desert  or  dung 
hill  ;  but  the  Promethean  spirit  seeks  a  higher  and 
a  higher  sphere.  This  life  within  life  —  this  cor 
cordium  of  existence  —  is  surely  travelling  on  a 
definite  road.  The  very  passion  with  which  it 
takes  its  direction,  its  readiness  to  seize  on  pain 
and  use  to  the  full  pain's  ennobling  properties,  are 
our  assurance  that  life  follows  an  instinct  within 
that  guides  it  to  that  which  is  either  its  source  or 
its  full  fruition.  We  must  interpret  the  seed  by 
the  flower,  not  the  flower  by  the  seed.  We  must 
interpret  life  by  its  deepest  attributes,  by  pain  and 
by  love. 

Pain  has  been  explained  as  an  accompaniment  of 
the  Promethean  spirit  of  life,  which,  in  precipitate 


THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW  125 

haste  to  proceed  upon  its  journey,  takes  the 
most  ready  and  efficacious  path  onward,  heedless 
of  what  it  breaks  and  crushes  on  the  way.  But 
pain  is  rather  an  impulse  within  the  spirit  of  life. 
Pain  is  its  conscience  urging  it  on.  Unless  we 
were  pricked  on  by  pain,  we  should  wish  to  stand 
still,  content  with  our  own  satisfaction,  meanly 
indifferent  to  higher  pleasures;  without  pain  all 
life  might  have  been  content  to  house  itself  in  low 
animal  forms,  and  wallow  in  bestiality,  ease,  and 
lust.  It  may  be  that  the  onward  progress  might 
have  been  accomplished  without  pain ;  we  might 
have  been  whirled  upward,  insensible,  toward  the 
universal  goal.  But  we  have  received  the  priv 
ilege  of  consciously  sharing  in  the  upward  journey, 
so  that  each  onward  movement  must  be  a  wrench 
from  the  past,  each  moment  a  parting,  each  step 
an  eternal  farewell.  These  noble  inconstancies 
are  tasks  imposed  by  pain. 

In  its  humblest  capacity  pain  serves  as  a  danger 
signal  for  the  body's  health,  or  as  punishment  for 
precautions  neglected ;  even  here,  however,  it  is 
more  spiritual  than  corporeal,  for  it  is  the  means 
by  which  the  soul  arouses  the  body  to  perpetual 
vigilance  in  the  service  of  Life.  Pain  must  con 
cern  itself  with  corporeal  things,  because  con 
sciousness  is  dependent  upon  the  body ;  it  must 


126  THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

discharge  its  share  of  the  general  tribute  that  con 
sciousness,  as  a  dependency,  pays  to  the  body. 
But  such  services  as  pain  may  render  in  the  ma 
terial  world  cannot  account  for  all  pain;  they 
cannot  account  for  the  heartache,  for  the  depth 
and  breadth  of  anguish,  for  the  sombre  majesty  of 
grief.  An  explanation  must  be  sought  elsewhere. 

Pain  is  a  function  of  the  soul ;  it  fosters  the 
preservation  and  spiritual  growth  of  conscious  life. 
The  pangs  of  conscience,  the  agony  of  the  heart, 
nourish  the  tenderer  elements  of  consciousness; 
they  root  out  the  docks  and  darnels  of  worldly 
pleasure,  and  so  protect  the  little  nurslings  of  the 
spirit  that  would  else  have  been  choked,  nursing 
them  with  passion  and  tears,  as  Nature  nurses 
with  sunshine  and  with  rain. 

No  man  can  say  by  what  means  inorganic 
matter  brought  forth  organic  creation;  nor  can 
we  say  how  the  corporeal  organism,  seemingly 
content  with  processes  of  material  decomposition 
and  reintegration,  generated  mind.  These  great 
deeds  were  done  in  the  dark,  they  have  left  no  wit 
nesses  ;  but  we  have  the  testimony  of  our  feelings 
that  some  momentous  change,  comparable  to 
these  great  changes,  is  even  now  taking  place, 
however  slow  its  progress  may  be.  Consciousness, 
in  its  own  ideal  world,  is  seething  with  independent 


THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW  127 

vitality,  eager  to  develop  itself,  eager  to  give 
birth  to  a  more  spiritual  state,  eager  to  help  Life 
take  another  great  onward  step.  The  excesses  of 
pain,  that  serve  no  corporeal  purpose,  seem  to  be 
caused  by  the  violent  efforts  of  the  Spirit  of  Life 
in  its  struggles  to  take  such  a  step ;  but,  in  reality, 
pain  is  the  cause  rather  than  the  effect. 

Charged,  therefore,  with  such  possibilities  in 
the  service  of  Life,  pain  —  its  capacities  little 
taxed  by  duties  of  guardianship  and  nurture  — 
rises  to  nobler  offices;  it  gradually  becomes  a 
closer  and  closer  companion  to  Life,  it  twines  its 
tendrils  round  the  tree  of  Life,  it  grafts  itself  on 
like  a  branch,  and  becomes  incorporate  with  Life 
itself,  an  essential  element  in  vital  energy,  a  func 
tion  of  some  vital,  spiritual  organ.  Yet  this  or 
gan  is  not  yet  established  at  a  definite  task,  for 
at  times  pain  seems  to  be  the  trenchant  edge  of 
the  Life  spirit,  cutting  and  purging  the  soul  from 
whatever  may  impede  her  upward  progress;  at 
times,  in  the  soul's  more  tranquil  moods,  pain 
seems  to  be  a  homesickness  for  the  home  that  Life 
aspires  to  create.  Moreover,  pain  partakes  of 
the  vast  variety  of  Life;  it  announces  the  prick 
of  a  needle  on  the  finger,  or  sweeps  over  the  soul 
in  the  beauty  of  tragedy  with  awe-inspiring  flight. 
Science,  which  deals  with  the  things  that  are  past, 


128  THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

unable  to  fit  pain  into  utilitarian  categories,  re 
peats  its  vaso-motor  formulas ;  but  faith,  which 
deals  with  things  that  are  to  be,  hails  it  as  the 
prophet  of  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth.  What 
better  explanation  of  pain  is  there  than  that  it  is 
the  birth  pangs  of  spirit,  the  assurance  of  new 
things  unseen  ? 

:  In  this  work  of  lifting  life  to  a  higher  stage, 
pain  is  but  one  of  many  ministers,  the  most 
terrible,  the  most  efficient.  All  the  forces  of  life 
work  to  that  end.  The  struggle  for  life,  often  as 
cribed  to  the  egotism  of  the  individual,  is  not 
properly  so  ascribed.  That  struggle  is  undertaken 
in  obedience  to  the  law  of  upward  progress.  Each 
vegetable  and  animal  is  in  honor  bound  to  carry 
on  its  individual  life  to  the  uttermost,  for  who 
can  tell  before  the  event  what  road  Life  will  take 
upon  its  upward  journey.  Each  is  bound  to  make 
itself  a  path  for  Life  to  take.  The  acorn,  the  seed 
of  the  dandelion,  the  spawn  of  the  herring,  the 
man-child,  must  hold  themselves  always  ready  to 
carry  Life  upon  the  next  onward  stage;  each 
claims  the  honor  for  itself  and  chooses  to  kill  and 
to  risk  death  rather  than  forego  the  chance  of  such 
supreme  dignity.  In  the  struggle  for  self-preser 
vation  lies  the  fulfilment  of  the  creature's  alle 
giance  to  life.  The  struggle  for  life  means  pain 


THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW  129 

inflicted  and  pain  received ;  but  in  pain  lies  the 
honor  of  the  organic  world.  We  cannot  imagine 
nobility  or  dignity  without  pain.  Lower  things 
do  not  experience  it.  Common  men  always  flee 
from  it  and  execrate  it ;  but,  now  and  then,  here 
and  there,  men  and  women  seek  it  out.  They 
may  quiver  in  agony,  they  may  succumb  momen 
tarily  to  the  weakness  of  the  flesh,  but  they  bear 
witness  that  pain  is  good.  For  them  pain  is  the 
ploughing  and  harrowing  which  must  precede 
seed-time  and  harvest.  These  men  we  have 
been  taught  to  call  saints  and  heroes.  Shall  we 
give  no  weight  to  their  testimony  ? 

IV 

As  it  is  with  pain,  so  is  it  with  human  love. 
Each  is  a  turning  toward  the  light  ahead.  The 
mutual  attraction  of  cells  has  no  meaning  till  it 
appears  as  the  first  effort  of  nature  on  her  way  to 
produce  human  affection.  At  every  stage  in  the 
drawing  together  of  cells  and  multiples  of  cells, 
whether  in  polyp,  reptile,  or  ape,  the  significance 
of  that  drawing  together  lies  in  that  for  which 
it  is  preparing  the  way.  So,  too,  is  it  with  human 
affections :  they  shine  with  a  light  not  their  own, 
but  reflected  from  the  higher  significance  of  the 
future.  Our  love  is  but  a  pale  anticipation  of  that 


130  THE   HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

love  which  the  universe  is  striving  to  round  out 
to  full-orbed  completeness.  Love,  at  least,  offers 
an  explanation  of  the  goal  of  life, —  life  struggling 
to  consciousness,  consciousness  rising  to  love.  All 
other  things  find  their  explanation  in  something 
higher,  but  love  is  its  own  fulfilment. 

Love  has  no  doubts.  To  itself  love  is  the  very 
substance  of  reality.  The  phenomena  of  sight, 
sound,  touch,  and  their  fellows,  are  but  the  con 
ditions  under  which  life  has  made  a  foothold  for 
itself  in  this  boisterous  world ;  the  senses  know 
nothing  beyond  their  own  functioning,  they  have 
nothing  to  say  regarding  the  end  or  purpose  of  life. 
But  to  love,  —  all  the  labor  and  effort  of  all  the 
universe,  with  all  its  sidereal  systems,  with  all  its 
ethereal  immensity,  has  been  for  the  sake  of  pro 
ducing  love.  Of  what  consequence  is  it,  whether 
insensible  matter  endure  a  myriad  years,  or  as 
sume  infinite  bigness  ?  In  the  absence  of  con 
sciousness,  an  infinity  of  matter  is  as  nothing. 
One  flash  of  conscious  life  illumined  by  love  is 
worth  all  the  patience,  all  the  effort,  all  the  labor, 
of  unconscious  energy  throughout  an  infinity  of 
time.  Consciousness  is  but  a  minister  to  love, 
to  the  love  that  is  to  be. 

Science,  with  its  predilection  for  sensuous  things, 
for  enumerations,  classifications,  explanations, 


THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW  131 

in  terms  of  matter  and  energy,  asserts  that  con 
sciousness  fulfils  no  useful  function  at  all.  Con 
sciousness  is  an  accidental  creation,  shot  out  like 
a  random  spark  by  the  friction  of  living,  a  sort 
of  tramp  that  has  stolen  a  ride  on  the  way.  Ac 
cording  to  this  theory  the  musician  would  con 
tinue  to  play  his  fiddle  whether  he  produced  a 
melody  or  not;  the  endless  chain  of  propulsions 
from  behind  would  impel  one  hand  to  finger 
the  strings,  the  other  to  ply  the  bow.  But 
to  the  non-scientific  man,  consciousness  is  the 
achievement  to  which  the  universe  has  bent  all 
its  energies. 

Had  the  universe  taken  a  different  turn,  or 
had  it  neglected  the  things  which  it  has  done, 
consciousness  as  we  know  it  would  never  have 
come  into  being.  But  consciousness  has  come, 
and  the  assertion  that  it  is  a  superfluous  thing, 
an  accident,  seems  to  have  been  hatched  from  the 
very  wilfulness  of  arrogance.  Because  science  — 
a  virtuoso  in  motion,  in  attractions  and  repulsions 
—  has  not  yet  discovered  the  function  of  con 
sciousness,  is  it  not  premature  to  say  that  con 
sciousness  has  no  function  ?  To  the  common 
mind  the  obvious  function  of  consciousness  — 
in  addition  to  the  minor  occupations  which  its 
genesis  from  matter  has  imposed  upon  it — is  to 


132  THE   HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

experience  love,  and  thereby  give  a  reasonable 
meaning  to  the  universe. 

If  matter,  or  energy,  has  succeeded  in  creating 
consciousness,  even  though  only  on  our  planet  and 
in  such  little  measure,  may  it  not  be  that  after 
other  aeons  of  restless  activity,  consciousness  in 
its  turn  shall  generate  another  state  of  being  to 
which  science  (then  absorbed  by  a  predilection  for 
consciousness,  as  it  is  now  absorbed  by  its  predi 
lection  for  sensuous  things)  will  deny  any  useful 
function,  but  which  shall  justify  itself  as  conscious 
ness  does  to-day  ?  May  it  not  be  —  if  we  let  our 
selves  listen  to  the  incantations  of  hope  —  that 
this  higher  spiritual  sensitiveness,  generated  by 
consciousness,  will  create  as  much  difference  be 
tween  the  new  order  of  creatures  that  shall  possess 
it  and  ourselves,  as  there  is  now  between  us  and 
inorganic  matter  ?  Does  not  the  experience  of 
those  men  who  —  in  daily  life  scarce  realizing 
material  things  —  have  felt  themselves  rapt  into 
the  presence  of  God,  point  to  some  such  inference  ? 
"When  love  has  carried  us  above  all  things  .  .  . 
we  receive  in  peace  the  Incomprehensible  Light, 
enfolding  us  and  penetrating  us."  But  whatever 
our  laboring,  sweating  universe  may  bring  forth, 
this  seems  to  be  the  direction  it  has  taken,  the 
goal  that  it  has  set  before  itself. 


THE   HOUSE  OF  SORROW  133 

Is  it  not  odd  that  men  should  continue  to  inter 
pret  love  in  terms  of  the  atom  and  the  cell,  of 
chemistry  and  physics,  when  the  whole  signifi 
cance  of  all  the  doings  of  matter  and  energy  comes 
from  our  human  consciousness  ? 

But  shall  they  that  suffer  pain  to-day,  that  have 
once  lived  in  the  Eden  of  love,  shall  these  enter 
into  the  light  of  the  day  that  is  to  dawn  ? 

EPILOGUE 

THE  traveller  sighed,  lost  in  perplexity;  and  the 
Spirit  of  Life  said,  "Come,  let  us  walk  in  the  courts 
of  the  House  of  Sorrow."  So  they  walked  through 
the  courts,  and  the  newcomer  beheld  in  the  House 
a  great  multitude  of  windows,  most  of  which  were 
dark,  as  if  there  was  no  light  within,  or,  as  if  the 
curtains  were  drawn  and  the  shutters  closed.  But 
other  windows  shot  forth  rays  of  light,  some  faint 
and  feeble,  some  stronger,  while  others  poured 
forth  a  flood  of  brightness. 

"Why  are  some  of  the  windows  so  bright?" 
inquired  the  newcomer;  and  the  Spirit  of  Life 
answered,  "Those  are  the  windows  of  the  light- 
bearers  ;  their  inmates  display  lights,  some  more, 
some  less." 

"With  what  do  they  feed  their  lights  ?"  asked 
the  newcomer. 


134  THE  HOUSE  OF  SORROW 

"A  few  shine  of  their  own  nature,"  answered 
the  Spirit,  "as  if  they  drew  upon  an  inexhaustible 
source  within ;  but  most  of  them  burn  the  oil  of 
hope." 

"If  they  have  no  hope,  what  then  ?"  asked  the 
newcomer. 

"Then,"  said  the  Spirit,  "they  must  make  their 
light  from  pain.  There  is  an  old  saying,  'He  that 
doth  not  burn,  shall  not  give  forth  light.'  The 
past  lightened  you  with  its  brightness;  but  by 
your  own  shining  you  must  lighten  the  present 
and  the  future.  Hope  gives  the  readier  light; 
but  even  if  hope  fail,  none  need  leave  their  windows 
dark,  for  where  you  have  pain  at  your  disposal, 
unlimited  pain,  it  should  not  require  great  spiritual 
ingenuity  to  use  that  pain  for  fuel." 

The  newcomer  bowed  his  head,  and  the  Spirit 
of  Life  led  him  to  his  appointed  room  within  the 
house. 


A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

I 

AN  Englishman  of  letters  who,  in  the  eyes  of 
Americans  at  least,  embodies  the  spirit  of  Oxford 
and  Cambridge,  expressed  not  long  ago  certain 
frank  opinions  about  America.  What  motive 
induced  him  to  tell  the  world  what  he  thinks  of 
us  ?  It  could  not  have  been  mere  excitement 
over  novel  experiences.  Englishmen  of  letters 
no  longer  write  about  America  in  the  spirit  of 
explorers.  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson  could  hardly 
have  appeared  to  himself — reflected  in  the  deli 
cate  mirror  of  his  mind  —  as  a  gentleman  adven 
turer,  staring  from  a  peak  of  Greek  culture  at  our 
amazing  characteristics,  and  differing  from  stout 
Cortez  mainly  in  not  being  silent.  The  war  had 
not  yet  begun ;  there  was  no  motive  for  bringing 
gentle  suasion  —  such  as  may  be  implied  in  any 
expression  of  British  interest  in  America  —  to 
bear  upon  our  neutrality.  The  readiest  explana 
tion  of  his  writing  is  that  he  was  prompted  by  a 
simple  motive :  he  wrote  under  the  need  of  say 
ing  what  was  on  his  mind.  This  is  the  very  kind 


136  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

of  criticism  to  give  ear  to.  When  the  human 
heart  must  unburden  itself  of  a  load,  it  neither 
flatters  nor  detracts;  it  acts  instinctively  with 
no  thought  of  consequences.  The  mood  is  a  mood 
of  truth.  The  man  who  speaks  the  truth  to  us  is 
our  best  friend,  and  we  should  always  listen  to  him. 

Among  other  things  Mr.  Dickinson  said,  "De 
scribe  the  average  Western  man  and  you  describe 
the  American ;  from  east  to  west,  from  north  to 
south,  everywhere  and  always  the  same  —  master 
ful,  aggressive,  unscrupulous,  egotistic,  and  at 
once  good-natured  and  brutal,  kind  if  you  do  not 
cross  him,  ruthless  if  you  do,  greedy,  ambitious, 
self-reliant,  active  for  the  sake  of  activity,  intel 
ligent  and  unintellectual,  quick-witted  and  crass, 
contemptuous  of  ideas  but  amorous  of  devices, 
valuing  nothing  but  success,  recognizing  nothing 
but  the  actual.  .  .  . 

"The  impression  America  makes  on  me  is 
that  the  windows  are  blocked  up.  It  has  be 
come  incredible  that  this  continent  was  colonized 
by  the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  .  .  .  Religion  is  becom 
ing  a  department  of  practical  business.  The 
churches  —  orthodox  and  unorthodox,  old  and 
new,  Christian,  Christian-Scientific,  theosophic, 
higher-thinking  —  vie  with  one  another  in  ad 
vertising  goods  which  are  all  material  benefits : 


A  FORSAKEN  GOD  137 

'Follow  me,  and  you  will  get  rich,'  'Follow  me, 
and  you  will  get  well/  'Follow  me,  and  you  will 
be  cheerful,  prosperous,  successful.'  Religion  in 
America  is  nothing  if  not  practical." 

Some  Americans  do  not  like  this  criticism. 
They  protest  that  the  critic  has  no  eye  for  the 
essential  qualities  which  render  our  country  dear 
to  us,  that  he  gazes  dimly,  through  a  mist  of  Cam 
bridge  traditions,  from  some  spleen-producing 
point  of  vision,  upon  a  people  spiritually  remote 
from  him.  Human  nature  instinctively  lays 
flattering  unction  to  its  soul ;  but  there  is  only 
one  right  way  to  take  the  fault-finding  of  an  intel 
lectual  and  highly  educated  man,  and  that  is  to 
see  how  much  truth  there  is  in  his  fault-finding 
and  then  strive  to  correct  our  faults.  Most 
Americans  do  not  care  about  the  opinions  of 
Oxford  and  Cambridge ;  they  say  that  we  must 
be  a  law  unto  ourselves,  and  absorb  nourishment 
from  the  sunshine  of  our  own  self-esteem.  But 
others,  less  robust,  do  set  store  by  the  opinion  of 
scholars  bred,  for  the  greater  part,  upon  the  re 
corded  mind  of  the  most  gifted  people  that  has 
ever  lived  in  Europe,  —  upon  the  books  of  Homer 
and  Pindar,  ^Eschylus  and  Euripides,  Plato  and 
Aristotle,  and  their  fellows.  It  will  do  us  less 
harm  to  assume  that  there  is  too  much  truth  in 


138  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

what  Mr.  Dickinson  has  said  of  us,  than  to  as 
sume  that  there  is  none. 

II 

Sixty  or  seventy  years  ago,  a  definite  concep 
tion  of  the  moral  and  intellectual  mould  upon 
which  men  should  shape  themselves,  appeared  to 
be  solidly  established.  That  conception  was  defin 
ite  and  readily  accepted  because  it  actually  had 
been  embodied  in  a  living  man,  Johann  Wolfgang 
von  Goethe.  Emerson,  Lowell,  Bayard  Taylor, 
each  in  his  respective  way,  and  all  other  leaders 
of  thought  in  America,  acknowledged  Goethe  as 
the  model  for  man,  as  an  intellectual  being,  to 
strive  to  imitate. 

Goethe's  position  seemed  as  secure  as  Shak- 
spere's,  Dante's,  or  Homer's.  Lower  than  they 
in  the  supreme  heights  of  song,  he  was  more  uni 
versal.  He  had  composed  poetry  that  in  peculiar 
sweetness  rivalled  the  Elizabethan  lyrics  and  sur 
passed  them  in  variety  and  depth  of  thought ;  he 
had  written  a  play  judged  equal  to  Hamlet  or  the 
Book  of  Job;  he  had  written  romances  that 
rivalled  /  Promessi  Sposi  in  nice  depiction  of  the 
soul's  workings,  and  were  as  interesting  in  their 
delineation  of  human  life  as  the  most  romantic  of 
the  Waverley  Novels.  He  had  been  the  chief 


A  FORSAKEN  GOD  139 

counsellor  of  a  sovereign  prince,  and  had  devised 
wise  policy  in  a  hundred  matters  of  statecraft. 
His  mind  had  put  forth  ideas  as  a  tree  in  spring 
time  puts  forth  leaves;  his  speculations  had 
travelled  in  wide  fields  of  scientific  thought ;  he 
had  divined  certain  processes  concerning  the 
origin  of  species  in  a  manner  that  still  associates 
his  name  with  the  names  of  Lamarck  and  Darwin. 
He  was  accoutred  with  a  radiant  intelligence,  with 
unmatched  cultivation,  with  wide  sympathies  ;  he 
was  free  from  prejudice  to  a  degree  unequalled 
in  our  modern  world.  His  intellectual  impartiality 
had  inspired  a  sect  of  persons  with  the  creed  that 
the  home  of  man  is  the  free  mind,  and  that  his  coun 
try  is  coterminous  with  the  whole  range  of  truth. 

Great  as  were  his  feats  in  literature  and  in 
science,  his  special  achievement  was  the  creation 
of  his  ideal  for  the  living  of  life,  an  ideal  that 
seemed  founded  on  so  broad  a  base  that  it  could 
but  be  a  question  of  time  and  perception  for  it  to 
be  universally  acknowledged  and  adopted.  More 
than  any  man,  from  Aristotle  to  Thomas  Aquinas, 
from  Aquinas  to  Auguste  Comte,  he  seemed  to 
have  a  true  view  of  the  ideal  proper  for  the  human 
spirit. 

Goethe's  ideal  embraces  freedom  from  the 
prejudices  of  home  and  education,  clearness  of 


140  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

vision,  courage  in  the  teeth  of  circumstance,  an 
ordered  life,  a  disciplined  spirit,  an  unclouded 
soul,  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  for  the  sake  of 
knowledge,  and  the  disinterested  worship  of  what 
ever  is  perfect. 

Nobility,  order,  measure,  and  the  underlying 
feeling  of  peace,  are  primary  elements  in  Goethe's 
ideal.  These  qualities,  if  there  be  any  remedy 
anywhere,  make  the  antidote  to  the  evils  which, 
according  to  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson,  beset  us. 
They  exalt  the  things  of  the  intellect,  and  take 
away  temptation  to  the  "unscrupulous,"  "  brutal" 
pursuit  of  material  things.  And  more  medicinal 
than  all  the  others  is  Goethe's  belief  in  inward 
peace.  Under  the  impulsion  of  instinct,  we  Ameri 
cans  move  to  and  fro,  go  up  and  down,  and  turn 
about.  We  seek  satisfaction  for  our  appetites  in 
activity.  Goethe  lived  in  the  world  and  was  of 
the  world,  and  yet  he  sought  peace  of  soul.  He 
sought  peace,  not  to  escape  from  the  world,  but 
to  gain  greater  dominion  over  it.  He  hoped  to 
obtain  greater  control  over  the  happenings  of  life, 
—  greater  power  to  put  them  to  use  and  to  enjoy 
ment,  —  by  penetrating  into  the  deeps  of  serenity ; 
he  desired  mastery  over  self  as  a  means  to  inward 
peace,  and  inward  peace  as  a  means  to  mastery 
over  life. 


A   FORSAKEN  GOD  141 

We  have  drifted  so  far  from  the  opinions  of 
Emerson  and  his  contemporaries,  and  —  if  Mr. 
Dickinson  is  right  in  his  criticisms  —  we  have  so 
completely  lost  sight  of  the  example  set  by  Goethe, 
that  I  will  expatiate  a  little  upon  what  Goethe  was, 
and  might  still  be  to  us. 

Ill 

For  Goethe,  inward  peace  was  not  the  final 
goal,  but  a  stage  on  the  way;  or,  rather,  it  was 
the  sustenance  of  life,  the  means  of  right  living, 
the  power  that  should  help  him  become  himself, 
help  him  grow  to  his  full  stature.  And  the  prob 
lem  of  his  self-education  was  how  to  attain  this 
inward  peace.  For  him,  as  for  all  seekers  in  the 
Christian  past,  the  conventional  way  would  have 
been  to  follow  Christian  teachings ;  and  there  is 
evidence  that  Christian  teachings  touched  him, 
touched  him  deeply.  They  stirred  him  somewhat 
as  Gothic  architecture  stirred  his  enthusiasm  in 
youth.  But  the  whole  trend  of  his  nature  pre 
vented  this.  To  Goethe  the  mediaeval  search- 
ings  after  God  were  dead  hypotheses;  the  road 
that  led  Richard  of  St.  Victor  or  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi  to  peace,  was  to  him  a  blind  alley.  Goethe 
did  not  wish  to  escape  from  the  world,  from  its 
perturbations  and  disquiet.  He  desired  inward 


142  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

peace,  as  a  hero,  resolute  to  fight  and  conquer, 
might  wish  for  a  shield. 

Another  path  was  to  follow  the  precepts  of  the 
pagan  philosophers,  such  counsels  as  the  imperial 
spokesman  of  ancient  Stoicism  gives  :  "Men  seek 
retreats  for  themselves,  houses  in  the  country,  sea 
shores,  and  mountains;  but  this  is  altogether  a 
mark  of  the  most  common  sort  of  men,  for  it  is  in 
a  man's  power,  whenever  he  shall  choose,  to  retire 
into  himself.  For  nowhere  either  with  more 
quiet  or  more  freedom  from  trouble  does  a  man 
retire  than  into  his  own  soul,  particularly  when 
he  has  within  him  such  thoughts  that  by  looking 
into  them  he  is  immediately  in  perfect  tran 
quillity  ;  and  I  affirm  that  tranquillity  is  nothing 
else  than  the  good  ordering  of  the  mind." 

The  Stoics  wished  to  retire  into  their  own  souls 
in  order  that  they  might  come  back  to  the  world 
free  from  discontent  with  worldly  things ;  whereas, 
Goethe  wished  to  come  back  into  the  world  with 
power  to  dominate  worldly  things.  He  was  there 
fore  obliged  to  devise  a  path  for  himself,  a  path 
far  nearer  to  the  pagan  than  to  the  Christian 
path,  but  still  a  new  path.  Might  not  a  devout 
man,  one  who  believed  that  "Das  Schaudern  ist 
der  Menschheit  bestes  Teil" — that  "the  tremu 
lous  sense  of  awe  is  man's  noblest  attribute,"  — 


A  FORSAKEN  GOD  143 

attain  peace  by  way  of  the  intellect,  by  living  life 
in  noble  completeness  ?  The  affirmative  answer 
was  the  essential  thesis  of  Goethe's  life.  He 
maintained  this  not  so  much  by  what  he  wrote,  as 
by  his  conduct.  He  was  no  disciple  of  the  mys 
tics  ;  he  did  not  propose  to  overcome  this  life  of 
phenomena  by  passing  beyond  phenomena,  but 
by  comprehending  them.  He  never  aspired  to 
spread  his  wings  and  fly  to  Heaven ;  he  kept  his 
feet  planted  on  solid  earth.  Madame  de  Stael 
says:  "Goethe  ne  perd  jamais  terre,  tout  en  atteig- 
nant  aux  conceptions  les  plus  sublimes"  —  "Goethe 
never  quits  the  earth,  even  when  reaching  up  to 
the  most  sublime  ideas."  And  yet  his  firm  stand 
upon  earth  and  his  concern  with  things  of  this 
world  did  not  tempt  him  to  adopt  worldly  meas 
ures.  "On  diroit  quit  n'est  pas  atteint  par  la  vie" 
—  "the  things  of  this  world  do  not  seem  to  touch 
him."  These  qualities  of  his  that  Madame  de 
Stael  noted  are  signs  that  the  seeker  had  attained. 
All,  or  almost  all,  testimony  concerning  Goethe's 
presence,  his  manner,  his  dignity,  is  in  accord. 
To  Eckermann,  who  did  not  see  him  till  he  was  an 
old  man,  he  seemed  "zuie  einer,  der  von  himm- 
lischem  Frieden  ganz  erfiillt  ist"  —  "like  a  man 
brimful  of  heavenly  peace."  All  his  life  he 
sought  knowledge,  for,  as  he  believed,  knowledge 


144  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

begets  understanding,  and  understanding  sym 
pathy,  and  sympathy  brings  the  spirit  into  harmony 
with  all  things,  and  harmony  engenders  peace. 
Goethe  is  the  great  embodiment  of  the  return 
of  the  modern  mind  to  the  religion  of  the  classic 
spirit,  seeking  inward  peace,  not  in  an  unseen 
heaven,  but  in  "the  good  ordering  of  the  mind." 

Goethe's  seeking  was  not  the  seeking  of  a 
man  of  letters ;  it  was  not  prompted  by  the  artist's 
instinct,  not  consciously  adopted  as  a  means  to 
master  his  art ;  it  was  the  seeking  of  the  human 
spirit  for  the  road  to  salvation  on  earth.  Take 
the  long  series  of  his  works,  —  poems,  plays, 
novels,  criticisms;  they  reveal  no  obsessing  pre 
occupation  with  the  attainment  of  a  high  serenity 
of  soul.  They  represent  the  adventures  of  his 
spirit  with  the  multitudinous  happenings  of 
human  life.  But  here  and  there,  like  light 
through  a  chink,  flashes  out  evidence  of  the  direc 
tion  in  which  his  soul  is  set. 

Nevertheless,  the  dominance  of  the  idea  of  in 
ward  peace  is  far  more  apparent  from  the  story 
of  his  life  than  from  his  writings.  Peace  shaped 
itself  in  his  mind  not  as  a  Nirvana,  not  as  a  rapt 
contemplation  of  God,  but  as  harmony,  as  a  state 
of  inward  unity,  of  a  right  relation  to  the  universe, 
manifest  to  men  as  order,  proportion,  measure, 


A   FORSAKEN  GOD  145 

serenity,  and  therefore,  necessarily,  in  relation  to 
other  men,  as  benevolence.  In  this  he  was 
powerfully  helped  by  the  strong  intellectual  in 
fluence  that  swept  over  Germany  in  his  youth, 
the  admiration  for  classical  art  taught  by  Winckel- 
mann  and  Lessing.  Under  the  teachings  of  these 
two  men,  the  stately  grandeur  of  classical  sculp 
ture  and  architecture  appeared  to  be  the  summit 
of  human  attainment,  the  goal  of  imitation  and 
effort.  He  learned  that  "Das  Ideal  der  Schonheit 
ist  Einfalt  und  Stille"  —  "the  ideal  of  beauty  is 
simplicity  and  repose." 

The  theories  of  Winckelmann  and  of  Lessing 
fermented  in  Goethe's  mind,  and,  when  he  came 
to  make  his  famous  Italienische  Reise,  they  fairly 
seethed  and  boiled.  The  beauty  of  repose  became 
his  sole  idea  of  beauty.  His  admiration  of  the 
Ludovisi  Juno,  he  says,  was  his  first  love  affair  in 
Italy.  At  Vicenza  he  stopped  in  admiration 
before  the  Palladian  palaces.  "When  we  stand 
face  to  face  with  these  buildings,  then  we  first 
realize  their  great  excellence;  their  bulk  and 
massiveness  fill  the  eye,  while  the  lovely  harmony 
of  their  proportions,  admirable  in  the  advance 
and  recession  of  perspective,  brings  peace  to  the 
spirit."  When  he  went  to  Assisi,  he  gave  a  wide 
berth  to  the  Basilica  of  St.  Francis,  half  appre- 


146  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

hensive  lest  its  Gothic  elements  might  bring  con 
fusion  into  his  thoughts,  walked  straight  to  the 
Temple  of  Minerva,  and  enjoyed  "a  spectacle 
that  bestowed  peace  on  both  eye  and  mind." 
Deep  in  his  nature,  this  preoccupation  with  what 
shall  bring  peace  is  hard  at  work. 

At  bottom  Goethe  preferred  art  to  life ;  he  pre 
ferred  to  see  the  doings  and  passions  of  men 
reflected  in  the  artist's  mirror  rather  than  to  see 
them  in  the  actual  stuff  of  existence.  Naturally, 
the  prevalent  notion  concerning  the  classical 
world  as  a  world  of  harmony,  of  calm,  of  self- 
control,  found  his  spirit  most  sympathetic.  At 
the  age  of  forty,  on  the  return  from  his  Italian 
travels,  he  accepted  the  great  pagan  tradition  in 
the  form  that  Marcus  Aurelius  left  it:  "It  is  in 
thy  power  to  live  free  from  all  compulsion  in  the 
greatest  tranquillity  of  mind.  ...  I  affirm  that 
tranquillity  is  nothing  else  than  the  good  ordering 
of  the  mind."  That  to  Goethe  is  the  gist  of  all 
right  thinking  about  life,  and  he  spent  his  own 
long  life  in  the  effort  to  express  it  in  his  behaviour. 

Goethe's  idea  of  harmony,  of  beauty,  of  meas 
ure,  of  right  relations  with  the  universe,  was,  of 
course,  not  a  mere  pagan  ideal  in  the  sense  which 
we  usually  give  to  the  word  pagan ;  it  was  essen 
tially  a  religious  conception,  —  religious  rather  in 


A  FORSAKEN  GOD  147 

the  Hellenic  than  in  the  Hebraic  sense,  for  the 
pagan  element,  with  its  tinge  of  pride  in  dominat 
ing  the  untoward  in  life,  is  always  there.  In  early 
life  his  religious  sentiments  were  profoundly 
affected  by  the  evangelical  traditions  of  Protestant 
Germany,  which  saturated  the  atmosphere  of 
Frankfort ;  afterwards  they  wore  a  more  philo 
sophical  hue,  but  they  were  always  strong  enough 
to  counteract  the  pagan  inclination  of  his  mind  to 
rest  content  at  the  stage  of  peace  attainable  by 
knowledge  and  self-control.  The  problem  before 
him  was  how  to  reconcile  the  transcendental  im 
pulses  of  his  spirit  with  the  ideal  of  a  harmonious 
whole.  For  the  most  part,  his  anti-ecclesiastical 
conception  of  freedom,  and  the  pagan  training  of 
his  mind,  turned  him  away  from  current  Chris 
tianity;  he  treated  it  as  he  treated  the  Basilica 
of  St.  Francis  at  Assisi,  he  simply  did  not  go  out 
of  his  way  to  look  at  it.  He  took  much  from 
Spinoza.  The  potential  divinity  within  him  in 
spired  him  with  reverence.  He  desired  to  gain 
the  composure  and  elevation  of  soul  becoming  to 
a  man  who  is  animated  by  the  divine  spirit  that 
permeates  all  nature.  From  Italy  he  wrote,  "I 
should  like  to  win  eternity  for  my  spirit."  And 
after  his  return,  he  grew  steadily  more  sensitive 
to  the  deep  current  that  propels  the  soul  toward 


148  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

the  unknown.  Gradually  he  approached,  by  his 
own  way,  the  borders  of  that  spiritual  region  in 
which  Plato  puts  the  soul.  Later  he  hid  his  face 
in  thick  clouds  of  symbolism ;  but  his  mystical 
inclination  —  die  Erhebung  ins  Unendliche  — 
never  dominated  his  notion  of  a  complete  human 
being  with  moral  and  intellectual  nature  fashioned 
on  a  heroic  model,  fit,  as  it  were,  to  be  lodged  in 
a  body  carved  by  Skopas.  He  reached  the  point 
where  he  united  harmoniously  the  sense  of  meas 
ure,  of  beauty,  of  peace  through  knowledge,  with 
a  tremulous  sensitiveness  to  the  possibilities  that 
tenant  the  vast  unknown  which  surrounds  our 
little  kingdom  of  sense. 

To  set  forth  such  an  ideal  as  this  to  the  world 
was  Goethe's  self-appointed  task.  No  other 
man,  perhaps,  in  the  whole  history  of  the  civilized 
world,  has  been  so  well  fitted  by  nature  and  edu 
cation  for  such  a  feat.  Dante,  a  greater  poet  and 
a  greater  man,  was  too  emotional,  too  passionate, 
ever  to  care  to  hold  up  what  to  him  would  have 
been  the  intolerable  composure  of  the  Stoic  spirit. 
Cervantes,  notwithstanding  his  clear-eyed  com 
passion  and  his  high  reverence  for  the  spiritual 
light  in  the  human  soul,  was  far  too  lacking  in 
general  culture,  even  to  essay  the  task.  Milton 
was  too  partisan,  too  dogmatic;  Shakspere  too 


A  FORSAKEN  GOD  149 

averse  to  any  idea  of  teaching  men  in  any  way 
other  than  by  letting  his  sunshine  play  on  human 
life.  And,  in  our  own  day,  Tolstoi  became  too 
blind  to  classical  beauty  and  to  harmony  of  the 
soul,  too  devoted  to  traditional  Christian  ideas, 
to  be  capable  of  any  such  endeavor. 

Goethe's  calm  spirit,  his  loyalty  to  fact,  his 
habit  "of  standing  on  the  solid  earth,"  his  prac 
tice,  as  he  says,  " Alle  Dinge  wie  sie  sindzu  sehen," 
— "  to  see  all  things  as  they  are,"  —  were  to  men 
of  a  rational  way  of  thinking  a  guarantee  that  he 
would  not,  upon  Daedalian  wings,  essay  a  flight 
of  folly  and  destruction ;  and  his  sensitiveness  to 
those  vague  reactions  and  movings  that  stir  in 
the  deeps  of  the  human  spirit  assured  men  with 
mystical  yearnings  that  he  was  not  cut  off  from 
their  fellowship.  For  him,  as  well  as  for  them, 
there  is  a  region  —  whether  it  be  in  man's  soul 
here  and  now,  or  elsewhere  —  where 

Alles  Vergangliche 
1st  nur  ein  Gleichniss; 
Das  Unzulangliche 
Hier  wird's  Ereigniss. 

Or,  as  Bayard  Taylor  translates  it : 

All  things  transitory 
But  as  symbols  are  sent; 
Earth's  insufficiency 
Here  grows  to  Event. 


150  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

IV 

Here,  then,  was  an  ideal  which,  one  would 
think,  should  have  been  a  shining  light  to  our 
world  to-day,  —  the  classic  spirit  embodied  in 
man's  life,  manifesting  beauty,  harmony,  meas 
ure,  self-restraint,  accompanied  by  an  open-eyed, 
unprejudiced  outlook  on  all  things  old  and  new, 
and  with  all  the  windows  which  look  toward 
things  divine  uncurtained  and  unshuttered.  Why 
has  it  fallen  ? 

It  may  be  said  that  modern  life  is  opposed  to 
such  an  ideal  as  Goethe's ;  and  it  may  be  —  as 
Mr.  Dickinson  probably  thinks  —  that  American 
nature  is  too  friable  a  material  to  endure  the 
carving  of  Hellenic  souls.  But,  be  that  as  it  may, 
it  is  apparent  that  the  failure  to  follow  Goethe's 
ideal  is  a  universal  failure,  almost  as  pitiful  in 
Europe  as  with  us ;  and  the  answer  to  the  question, 
why  has  this  ideal  fallen,  must  be  sought  in  causes 
that  operate  in  Europe  as  well  as  in  America. 

One  can  see  plainly  several  forces,  good  and 
bad,  at  work,  —  among  them,  science,  luxury, 
the  national  spirit,  the  humanitarian  movement, 
and  democracy. 

Science  has  drawn  into  its  service  a  large  part 
of  the  nobler  spirits  among  men,  and  inspired 


A  FORSAKEN  GOD  151 

them  with  the  narrower  doctrine  of  seeking  out 
the  ways  of  nature.  But  science,  if  it  has  diverted 
many  men  who  might  have  followed  Goethe's 
Hellenic  idealism,  has  in  many  ways  supported 
his  views  :  it  serves  truth,  if  not  the  whole  truth, 
it  encourages  in  its  servitors  simplicity  of  life,  it 
places  their  rewards  largely  in  the  satisfaction  of 
the  spirit.  On  the  other  hand,  modern  science 
tends  to  overvalue  the  inanimate  at  the  expense 
of  life ;  it  encourages  the  notion  that  final  truth 
may  be  weighed,  measured,  and  tested  ;  too  often 
it  lays  stress  on  knowledge  for  utility's  sake, 
rather  than  for  the  sake  of  knowledge  itself,  or, 
as  Goethe  would  have  done,  for  the  increase  of 
sympathy  which  knowledge  brings.  By  direct 
ing  attention  to  the  manifold  phenomena  outside 
the  real  self  —  to  heavenly  bodies,  to  the  sub 
stances  of  our  planet,  to  plants,  germs,  fossils, 
atoms,  electrons,  and  all  the  phenomena  of  the 
sensible  universe  —  and  to  our  minds  and  bodies 
as  things  apart  from  ourselves,  it  necessarily  be 
littles  the  importance  of  the  rounded  perfection 
of  self,  the  importance  of  equilibrium  in  the  sum 
of  a  man's  relations  to  all  things  that  are  and  to 
all  things  that  may  be. 

Science  always  concentrates  attention  on  one 
small  portion  of  life.     There  is  no  science  of  life 


152  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

as  a  whole ;  none  that  teaches  us  our  relations  to 
the  universe.  Science  in  itself  is  an  unreal 
thing,  an  abstraction ;  we  no  longer  have  science, 
but  sciences.  Like  the  children  of  Saturn,  they 
have  destroyed  their  father.  There  are  physics, 
chemistry,  botany,  astronomy,  geology,  palaeon 
tology,  zoology,  psychology,  and  many  others,  all 
destined  to  be  divided  and  subdivided,  and  there 
will  be  as  many  more  as  there  are  objects  of  intel 
lectual  curiosity  in  the  universe.  The  swing  of 
scientific  thought  is  centripetal ;  each  science  is  a 
jealous  god  and  will  have  no  other  gods  share  in 
its  worship.  The  field  of  attention  for  each  ser 
vant  of  science  grows  smaller  and  smaller.  It 
would  be  as  impossible  now  for  a  man  to  be  a  great 
poet  and  a  great  man  of  science,  like  Goethe,  as 
for  a  man  to  be  familiar  with  the  whole  sum  of 
contemporary  knowledge,  as  Dante  was.  Devo 
tion  to  science,  in  this  century,  is  necessarily  fol 
lowed  by  some  such  experience  as  that  which 
Darwin  underwent ;  the  meticulous  observation 
of  facts  blunts  all  finer  sensitiveness  to  poetry  and 
music.  Science  means  specialization,  and  dwells 
on  the  multiplicity  of  phenomena ;  Goethe  wished 
a  universal  outlook,  and  was  preoccupied  with 
that  unity  which  binds  all  to  all. 

Luxury,  the  application  of  man's  control  over 


A   FORSAKEN  GOD  153 

the  forces  of  nature  to  self-indulgence,  sets  the 
centre  of  gravity  for  human  life  in  material  things. 
Luxury  is  the  care  of  our  brother,  the  body,  — 
St.  Francis  used  to  call  it  Brother  Ass,  —  care  so 
assiduous,  so  elaborated,  so  refined,  that  it  ap 
proaches  to  worship,  and  necessarily  crowds  out 
the  care  and  solicitude  that  should  be  devoted  to 
the  soul.  "Painting  the  outward  walls  so  costly 
gay"  is  a  far  easier  art,  much  more  within  reach 
of  the  successful  many,  than  the  decoration  of  the 
soul.  The  organization  of  modern  industry,  the 
multiplication  of  machinery,  by  giving  more  and 
more  to  those  who  have  already,  strengthens  the 
thews  and  muscles  of  luxury.  Luxury  is  head 
strong,  potent  in  its  dominion  over  fashion,  un 
scrupulous  in  imposing  its  customs  and  opinions, 
insolent  in  trampling  down  all  in  its  way.  This 
is  what  is  meant  by  the  phrase  "a  materialistic 
age";  it  is  the  substitution  of  an  easy  art  for  a 
difficult  art,  of  a  gross  material,  the  body,  which 
demands  the  attention  of  the  gymnast,  the  masseur, 
the  chiropodist,  for  a  fine  material,  the  soul,  which 
demands  the  service  of  the  intellect  and  of  the 
spirit.  There  is  no  danger  that  our  Brother  the 
Body  will  ever  be  neglected,  or  that  material 
things  will  be  despised.  Goethe  was  no  disciple 
of  our  Lady  Poverty ;  but  he  held  that  a  man's 


154  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

wealth  consists  less  in  what  he  owns  than  in  what 
he  thinks  and  in  what  he  is. 

National  sentiment  has  had  a  mighty  career  in 
the  nineteenth  century,  witness  Italy,  Germany, 
Greece,  Bulgaria,  Servia,  as  well  as  the  United 
States ;  and  has  by  no  means  confined  itself  to 
political  patriotism,  witness  the  attempted  revival 
of  the  Irish  language  and  of  Provencal;  but 
whether  patriotism  concern  a  race,  a  nation,  a 
language,  or  a  cult,  it  is  by  its  very  definition  a 
limitation.  The  Preacher  of  universal  compas 
sion  said,  "Whosoever  shall  do  the  will  of  my 
Father  which  is  in  Heaven,  the  same  is  my 
brother  and  sister  and  mother."  Patriotism  has 
its  own  virtues,  but  among  them  is  not  that  of 
maintaining  Goethe's  ideals.  Even  during  Ger 
many's  war  of  liberation  against  Napoleon,  Goethe 
was  absolutely  indifferent  to  patriotism,  at  least 
in  its  political  form.  He  maintained  the  position 

Da  wo  wir  lieben 
Ist's  Vaterland  — 

(there  where  we  love  is  our  country). 

Then  there  is  the  strong  current  of  humani- 
tarianism,  which  tends  to  regard  man  as  an  animal 
with  material  wants,  and  spends  itself  on  factory 
legislation,  hygiene,  sanitation,  and  almsgiving. 


A  FORSAKEN  GOD  155 

Goethe  was  not  deficient  in  benevolence  toward 
his  fellow  men ;  but  he  subordinated  this  interest 
to  his  prime  concern  for  completeness,  for  mould 
ing  within  the  individual  a  harmonious,  beautiful, 
heroic  nature ;  and  since  such  an  ideal  for  the 
mass  of  men  is  outside  the  pale  of  achievement, 
he  did  not  extend  his  serious  interest  to  them. 


Added  to  these  —  and  this  cause  of  the  failure 
of  Goethe's  ideals  has  perhaps  been  more  effective 
in  America  than  elsewhere  —  stands  democracy 
and  all  democracy  means.  Democracy  has  solid 
foundations  of  its  own,  —  just  as  patriotism,  hu- 
manitarianism,  and  science  have,  —  and  possesses 
its  own  defenders  and  eulogists.  Goethe  was  not 
among  them.  He  was  an  aristocrat ;  he  believed 
in  the  government  of  the  best  in  all  departments 
of  human  society.  The  right  of  the  best  to  domi 
nate,  even  at  the  expense  of  the  inferior,  was  to 
him  axiomatic.  Democracy,  with  its  tenderness 
toward  the  incompetent  multitude,  with  its  ideas 
of  equality  and  fraternity,  with  its  indifference  to 
quality  when  quantity  is  concerned,  with  its 
good-humored  inefficiency  and  its  vulgar  self- 
satisfactions,  was  wholly  alien  to  his  spirit.  He 
felt  no  equality  or  fraternity  between  himself  and 


156  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

the  multitude.  In  democracy  the  mass  of  the 
people  possess  not  merely  a  voice  in  the  political 
government,  but  also  a  voice  in  the  moral  gov 
ernment  of  the  nation,  a  share  in  the  formation 
of  the  ethical,  intellectual,  sentimental,  and  ideal 
character  of  the  people.  Goethe  would  as  soon 
have  trusted  these  supreme  interests  to  Demos, 
as  Don  Quixote  would  have  intrusted  his  knightly 
honor  to  Sancho's  keeping.  Goethe  regarded 
man  primarily  as  a  creature  charged  with  the 
duty,  and  endowed  with  the  possibility,  of  self- 
perfectioning ;  but  democracy  values  men  accord 
ing  as  they  possess  distinct  and  special  capacities, 
according  as  they  can  do  the  immediate  task  need 
ful  to  be  done.  Democracy,  having  many  in 
terests  of  its  own,  pays  little  or  no  heed  to  matters 
not  congenial  to  it.  Democracy  is  indifferent  to 
form,  because  for  democracy  form  and  substance 
have  no  necessary  relation ;  but  to  Goethe  form 
and  substance  were  one.  Democracy  is  indif 
ferent  to  elegance,  because  elegance  is  unsuitable 
to  the  multitude.  Democracy,  cares  little  for 
beauty,  because  beauty  establishes  a  caste  apart. 
Democracy  neglects  art,  for  art  rests  upon  the 
privileges  of  nature,  upon  the  endowment  of 
gifted  individuals,  upon  special  sensitiveness  and 
special  capacities ;  art,  by  its  very  nature,  means 


A  FORSAKEN  GOD  157 

achievement  by  the  few,  enjoyment  by  the  few. 
Democracy  looks  to  the  achievements  and  the 
enjoyments  of  the  many.  Aristocracy  is  the 
assertion  of  quality,  of  rareness  of  vision,  of  clear 
ness  of  conception,  of  refinement  and  finish;  it 
lays  stress  on  the  unusual,  on  the  beneficent  in 
justice  of  nature  that  enables  lesser  men  to  have 
greater  men  to  look  up  to,  and  charges  the  greater 
men  with  deep  personal  responsibility.  Democ 
racy  tends  to  belittle  reverence,  for  reverence  is 
devotion  to  that  which  is  greater  than  ourselves, 
and  seeks  to  find  an  object  on  which  to  spend 
itself.  The  reverent  soul  must  believe  in  some 
thing  greater  than  itself,  whether  in  the  human 
or  the  superhuman ;  it  discovers,  it  unfolds,  and, 
if  necessary,  imagines,  something  above  itself. 
But  Democracy  has  a  passion  for  levelling,  for  re 
ducing  all  to  a  common  plane,  so  that  no  one 
shall  complain  that  others  have  more  than  he,  or 
are  better  placed.  Such,  at  least,  are  some  of  the 
criticisms  which  the  few  pass  upon  the  ideals  of 
the  many. 

It  is  the  same  with  the  democratic  idea  of 
fraternity.  What,  aristocracy  asks,  is  the  worth 
of  brotherhood  unless  brothers  have  a  goodly 
heritage  to  divide  ?  The  important  thing  is  to 
create  an  inheritance,  whether  of  beauty,  of 


158  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

virtue,  of  glory;  then  let  who  can  possess  it. 
The  two  points  of  view  also  take  issue  over  the 
idea  of  liberty.  Democracy  too  easily  abases  its 
conception  of  liberty  to  the  liberty  to  eat  and 
sleep,  the  liberty  to  lie  back  and  fold  one's  arms, 
the  liberty  to  be  active  for  activity's  sake  (as  Mr. 
Dickinson  says  of  us),  liberty  to  do  what  to  one's 
self  seems  good ;  whereas  aristocracy  demands 
self-renunciation  for  the  sake  of  an  ideal,  demands 
discipline,  obedience,  sacrifice.  Democracy  tends 
to  set  a  high  value  on  comfort,  on  freedom  from 
danger,  on  "joy  in  commonalty  spread"  ;  whereas 
aristocracy  asserts  the  necessity  of  danger  and  of 
pain  in  the  education  of  man.  Democracy  values 
human  quantity,  aristocracy  human  quality. 
Democracy  tends  to  render  the  intellect  subser 
vient  to  the  emotions,  while  aristocracy  tends  to 
put  emotion  to  the  service  of  the  intellect. 

There  are  good  grounds  upon  which  democracy 
may  be  eulogized,  —  the  ground  of  justice,  for 
example;  that  was  not  Mr.  Dickinson's  business 
nor  is  it  mine;  democracy's  main  fault  consists 
in  its  failure  to  confine  itself  to  economic  matters, 
to  politics,  to  material  things,  —  consists  in  over 
flowing  its  proper  limits  and  touching  matters 
with  which  it  has  no  proper  concern.  Goethe 
had  little  sympathy  with  democracy,  especially 


A  FORSAKEN  GOD  159 

in  the  violent  form  which  it  assumed  in  his  day, 
in  those  manifestations  that  accompanied  and 
followed  the  French  Revolution. 

Another  influence,  springing  from  science,  hu- 
manitarianism,  and  democracy,  adds  its  strength 
to  theirs.  Goethe's  ideal  for  the  human  spirit, 
however  different  from  the  ideals  of  democracy, 
bears  no  small  analogy  to  the  Christian's  ideal  of 
the  soul.  For  the  Christian  the  soul  is  every 
thing,  life  is  its  opportunity,  pleasure  is  a  means 
of  acquiring  strength  by  renunciation,  grief  an 
aid  to  mounting  higher,  earthly  losses  are  spiritual 
gains ;  his  highest  hope  is  to  render  his  soul  as 
perfect,  as  beautiful,  as  fully  in  accord  with  celes 
tial  harmonies,  as  may  be.  In  Goethe  this  ideal 
was  replaced  by  the  ideal  of  a  human  spirit  that 
triumphs  over  the  obstacles  of  life,  uses  the  affec 
tions,  the  passions  even,  for  fuller  self-develop 
ment  ;  that  aims  at  the  harmonious  fulfilment 
of  all  its  capacities,  and  seeks  knowledge  for  the 
sake  of  finer  communion  with  deity  in  nature. 
The  trend  of  practical  religion,  under  the  pressure 
of  humanitarianism,  is  to  regard  the  devotion  that 
strives  to  render  the  soul  perfect,  as  a  form  of 
egotism,  and  a  kindred  feeling  swells  the  general 
flood  of  modern  conceptions  that  have  swept  away 
Goethe's  ideals. 


160  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

It  might  have  been  thought  that  the  religious 
element  in  Goethe's  ideal  would  have  saved  it 
in  America,  if  anywhere,  from  destruction ;  for  we 
are  a  religious,  or  at  least,  as  Mr.  Dickinson 
would  say,  a  superstitious  people.  Goethe's  sym 
pathetic  approval  of  the  theory  that  the  human 
spirit  tends  toward  a  point  of  gravity  at  the 
centre  of  our  universe,  is  consonant  with  per 
manent  human  needs ;  so  is  his  sense  of  form,  of 
beauty,  of  dignity.  But  whether  it  be  the  effect 
of  democracy,  of  a  childlike  desire  for  novelty,  of 
an  undisciplined  impatience  with  tradition,  or  of 
self-confidence  in  our  power  to  create  new  forms 
of  religion  that  shall  more  fully  satisfy  our  own 
needs,  or  whatever  the  cause,  the  reasonableness, 
the  conservatism,  the  restraint  that  mark  the 
religious  element  in  Goethe's  ideal,  have  accom 
plished  nothing  to  maintain  that  ideal  with  us. 

So  far  it  would  appear  that  the  causes  which 
have  combined  to  overthrow  Goethe's  ideals  are 
scarcely  more  American  than  European;  and 
that  theory  is  confirmed  by  the  popular  attitude 
toward  Goethe's  ideals  in  Germany,  where  they 
seem  to  have  fared  no  better  than  elsewhere. 
The  old  gods  of  serenity  and  beauty,  Goethe  and 
Beethoven,  have  been  taken  down  from  their 
pedestals,  and  Bismarck  and  Wagner  have  been 


A  FORSAKEN  GOD  l6l 

set  up  in  their  stead.  The  ideal  of  duty  toward 
self  has  certainly  not  suffered  loss  of  power,  but 
the  self  that  is  the  object  of  duty  is  a  self  of 
dominion,  not  over  fate  and  inward  lack  of  har 
mony,  but  of  dominion  over  other  men.  The 
heroic  model  is  no  longer  that  of  Phoebus  Apollo, 
but  of  a  sinewed  and  muscular  Thor.  Domina 
tion,  not  harmony,  is  the  teaching  of  the  most 
eminent  German  of  letters  since  Schopenhauer.  It 
is  true  that  Nietzsche  is  the  greatest  upholder  of 
aristocracy  since  Goethe;  but  Nietzsche  did  not 
care  for  measure,  proportion,  harmony,  pure 
beauty.  The  whole  development  of  Germany,  — 
the  most  brilliant  there  has  been  since  that  of 
Italy  of  the  Renaissance,  —  in  energy,  in  material 
well-being,  in  orderliness,  in  science,  in  self- 
confidence,  in  ambition,  has  moved  far  from  the 
conception  of  full-minded  completeness  of  char 
acter,  intellect,  and  spirit,  which  Goethe  taught 
in  confidence  that,  like  light  in  the  dark,  like 
warmth  in  the  cold,  such  completeness  would 
receive  the  gratitude  and  honor  of  men. 

Are  we  not  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
Zeitgeist  is  opposed  to  Goethe's  ideals,  that  Mr. 
Dickinson's  criticism  fits  democracy  and  its 
attendant  phenomena  rather  than  America  ?  Is 
it  not  democracy  rather  than  America  that  is 


162  A  FORSAKEN  GOD 

"contemptuous  of  ideas,  but  amorous  of  devices"  ? 
The  Latin  democratic  countries  must  be  excepted, 
for  Latins  have  a  natural  gift  for  form  and  a 
special  respect  for  intellectual  accomplishment 
that  colors  even  their  democracy;  besides,  de 
mocracy  comes  to  them  more  naturally  than  to 
northern  peoples.  But  if  Mr.  Dickinson  had  been 
travelling  in  Australia,  New  Zealand,  or  Canada, 
would  he  not  have  come  to  very  much  the  same 
conclusion  ? 

Our  neglect  to  follow  Goethe's  ideal,  however, 
remains  our  own  fault,  even  if  other  democratic 
countries  have  committed  the  same  fault.  We 
have  brought  Mr.  Dickinson's  criticism  on  our 
own  heads.  We  must  profit  by  that  criticism, 
and  return  to  Goethe's  ideal.  Some  steps  to  be 
taken  are  obvious.  First  of  all  we  must  fully 
satisfy  the  democratic  desires  of  the  Zeitgeist  by 
making  the  spirit  of  pure  democracy  prevail  in  all 
matters  of  politics  and  economics,  either  by  giv 
ing  pure  democracy  supreme  power  over  these 
matters,  or,  supposing  that  there  is  some  other 
way  to  accomplish  the  same  result,  then  by  giv 
ing  supreme  power  to  the  forces  that  can  put 
such  other  way  into  effect.  Then,  when  democ 
racy  shall  have  received  its  due,  it  must  no  longer 
seek  to  lay  its  hand  on  literature,  art,  higher 


A  FORSAKEN  GOD  163 

education,  pure  science,  philosophy,  manners. 
And  then,  —  when  the  mass  of  men  are  politically 
and  economically  free,  —  we  must  preserve  the 
sacred  fire  of  intellectual  light  by  setting  apart  a 
priesthood,  a  body  of  intellectual  men  who  shall 
worship  the  God  of  truth  and  him  alone.  Our 
professors  at  Harvard,  Yale,  and  elsewhere,  for 
instance,  constitute,  or  should  constitute,  such  a 
priesthood  ;  but  the  public  is  not  satisfied  to  have 
them  serve  the  sacred  flame :  the  public  wishes 
them  to  apply  that  sacred  flame  to  furnaces  and 
dynamos.  We  do  need,  as  Mr.  Dickinson  implies, 
intellectual  traditions  of  generations  of  educated 
men ;  those  traditions  should  be  taught  as  a 
sacred  cult ;  and  their  priests  should  be  held  in 
special  reverence.  Those  priests  should  be  most 
honored  when  they  serve  intellectual  concerns  in 
which  the  public  sees  no  profit,  such  as  philosophy 
and  the  classics.  We  do  need,  as  a  quickening 
fountain,  in  the  midst  of  us,  a  spirit  of  reverence 
for  intellectual  beauty.  Had  such  a  spirit  of 
reverence  existed  among  us,  should  we  have  been 
so  exposed  to  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson's  criticisms, 
and  should  we  now  be  almost  as  remote 
from  Goethe  as  from  Dante  or  Plato  ? 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

A  DIALOGUE  CONCERNING  THE  LOEB  CLASSICAL 
LIBRARY  l 

BROWN,  a  historian.  JONES,  a  clergyman. 

ROBINSON,  a  dilettante 

Scene,  Brown's  apartment 
BROWN  ;  enter  JONES 

BROWN.  —  How  cT  do,  Jones,  delighted  to  see 
you.  I  hope  that  you  are  very  well. 

JONES.  —  Very  well,  my  dear  boy,  and  you  ? 
How  are  you  getting  on  with  your  work  ?  Have 
you  the  German  microscope  under  your  eye  ?  Are 
you  putting  the  atomic  theory  to  use  in  history  ? 

[Enter  ROBINSON] 

ROBINSON.  —  How  d'  do,  how  d*  do  ?  How 
are  you,  parson  ?  And  how  are  you,  Mommsen 
Gregorovius  Macaulay  ? 

BROWN.  —  I  have  been  loafing  lately.  I  felt 
the  need  of  contrast,  of  looking  about  me  a  little 

1  The  Loeb  Classical  Library.  Edited  by  T.  F.  PAGE  and 
W.  H.  D.  ROUSE. 

164 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  165 

at  the  actual  world.  If  one  does  not  turn  away 
from  dead  records  occasionally,  one  is  in  danger  of 
forgetting  that  history  professes  to  be  a  record 
of  life. 

JONES.  —  Does  it  ?  If  the  histories  that  I  see 
record  life,  the  world  has  been  horribly  dull. 
All  past  generations  of  Germans  must  have  been 
delighted  to  die.  I  dare  say  that  history  should 
be  a  record  of  life;  it  certainly  should  record 
enough  of  human  experience  to  teach  us,  the  liv 
ing,  what  to  do  and  what  to  let  alone.  History 
ought  to  be  of  service;  that  is  its  justification. 

ROBINSON.  —  Yes,  service  in  a  broad  sense, 
that  whatever  adds  an  interest  to  life  is  serviceable. 
I  don't  mean  to  correct  you,  mon  vieux,  but  I  am 
afraid  you  are  tarred  with  the  notion  of  a  moral 
interpretation  of  history. 

JONES. — You  can't  avoid  the  moral  interpre 
tation  of  history,  mon  cher,  unless  you  are  willing  to 
eliminate  from  our  lives  metaphysics,  ethics,  relig  — 

ROBINSON.  —  Gladly,  gladly ! 

BROWN.  —  Have  a  cigar  ? 

[  They  take  cigars  and  light  them] 

JONES  [picking  up  a  book].  —  Hullo  !  You,  too, 
have  got  the  Loeb  Classical  Library.  Have  you 
looked  at  it  ? 


1 66  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

BROWN.  —  Yes,  a  little,  at  the  first  volumes 
that  have  come  out. 

ROBINSON.  —  I  subscribed  the  other  day.  I 
have  an  empty  shelf  at  the  top  of  my  bookcase 
that  needs  to  be  filled  up.  I  call  it  my  Via  Appia, 
because  I  bury  the  classics  there. 

JONES.  —  Do  you  frequent  it  ? 

ROBINSON.  —  I  read  them  on  Sunday  mornings 
as  an  excuse  for  not  attending  your  church. 

JONES.  —  Fm  more  than  glad  to  have  you  listen 
to  louder  preachers  of  piety  than  I  am. 

BROWN.  —  Seriously,  how  do  you  like  them  ? 
I  mean  do  you  think  it  worth  while  to  republish  the 
classics  ?  This  publication  sounds  like  a  challenge. 

ROBINSON.  —  It  is  a  challenge,  a  serious 
challenge.  It  raises  the  question  of  the  worth 
of  the  classics  in  its  broadest  form. 

JONES. — You  mean  the  value  of  the  classics 
in  education  as  opposed  to  the  value  of  science  ? 

ROBINSON.  —  No,  although  that  question  is 
included.  This  is  a  challenge,  not  from  a  man  of 
science,  but  from  a  man  who  is  interested  in  litera 
ture  and  professes  a  belief  in  the  classics,  demand 
ing  to  know  what  we  honestly,  not  professionally, 
not  conventionally,  but  what,  honor-bright,  we 
think  of  the  classics.  The  Loeb  Classical  Library 
says  as  distinctly  as  a  dozen  or  twenty  published 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  167 

volumes,  with  ten-score-odd  to  follow,  can  say: 
"Come,  you  are  no  longer  able  to  take  refuge  in 
the  inadequacy  of  your  school  and  college ;  you 
can  no  longer  say  that  if  you  had  but  the  necessary 
time  to  polish  up  your  Greek,  to  practise  your 
Latin,  you  would  have  Euripides  in  one  pocket 
and  Lucretius  in  the  other,  and  in  odd  moments 
be  gratifying  your  natural  appetite  for  the  classics. 
You  have  no  further  excuses.  Do  you  or  do  you 
not  care  a  rap  about  us?"  Here  is,  indeed,  an 
embarrassing  question  for  us  who  have  always 
upheld  the  classics  with  our  lips,  for  it  does  not 
come  from  the  camp  of  the  men  of  science,  but 
from  our  own  friends.  So  long  as  the  classics 
were  safely  locked  up  in  their  Greek  and  Latin 
cupboards,  we  were  always  able  to  defend  our 
selves  with  an  "if."  This  hypothetical,  and,  it 
is  to  be  feared,  sometimes  hypocritical,  defence, 
is  no  longer  open  to  us,  now  that  the  cupboards  are 
unlocked  ;  we  have  but  to  turn  the  handle  and  we 
shall  be  able  to  satisfy  our  hunger.  Mr.  Loeb  has 
done  the  cause  of  honesty  a  good  turn.  We  can 
no  longer  shuffle  and  evade,  we  must  confront  the 
question,  What  do  the  classics  mean  to  us  ? 

BROWN.  —  Well,  if  this  is  a  challenge,  it  is  a 
fair  challenge.  Mr.  Loeb  has  taken  a  generous 
view  of  the  classics.  His  library,  according  to  the 


1 68  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

announcement,  will  contain  not  merely  the  litera 
tures  of  ancient  Greece  and  ancient  Rome,  but 
also  the  literature  of  early  Christianity,  as  well  as 
whatever  there  is  of  value  and  interest  in  later 
Greek  and  Latin  literature  until  the  fall  of  Con 
stantinople.  So  wide  a  range,  shelf  upon  shelf, 
eliminates  whatever  objections  individual  taste 
might  have  raised  to  a  narrower  selection. 

JONES.  —  Suppose  that  we  were  to  take  up  the 
challenge  and  endeavor  to  frame  an  answer  to  this 
question.  Should  we  not  first  have  to  face  the 
preliminary  question,  what  does  literature  in 
general  do  for  us  ?  Must  not  that  question  be 
answered  before  we  say  just  what  the  classical 
literatures  mean  to  us  ? 

BROWN.  —  Well,  let's  see  if  we  do  not  agree 
on  the  value  of  literature  in  general.  In  the  first 
place  we  all  agree  that  life  is  a  marvellous  happen 
ing.  We  find  ourselves  here  in  the  midst  of  a  vast 
flux  of  forces.  Men  of  science  bid  us  fit  ourselves 
for  this  wonderful  experience  by  studying  matter 
and  energy,  the  earth  and  its  materials,  the  air, 
gases,  electricity,  chemical  activities,  germs,  all 
the  phenomena  that  touch  our  senses.  This  is 
sound  advice ;  we  human  beings  are  frail  creatures, 
sensitive  to  the  play  of  this  infinite  variety  of 
forces.  We  feel,  we  suffer,  we  enjoy.  In  fact  our 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  169 

intelligence  is  a  contrivance  of  nature  to  protect 
and  guard  our  sensitiveness.  Yet  these  forces 
of  nature,  these  mysterious  gods,  so  potent  in  sky, 
air,  and  earth,  noble  and  terrible  in  lightning 
and  tempest,  in  comet  and  earthquake,  in  the  very 
great  and  the  very  little,  manifest  themselves  still 
more  terribly  and  still  more  nobly  in  human  form. 
Our  fellow  men  are  the  forces  that  make  our  life 
a  pleasure  or  a  pain,  a  happiness  or  a  vain  thing. 
From  them  come  love,  affection,  sympathy,  appro 
bation,  distrust,  disapproval,  hate.  They  are  the 
forms  of  energy  that  we  need  chiefly  to  study, 
and  as  it  is  difficult  to  learn  lessons  from  actual 
life,  it  is  important  to  study  these  human 
energies  in  the  past,  where  at  our  leisure  we 
can  go  over  and  over  the  record ;  there  the  re 
sults  of  causes  are  chronicled  as  well  as  the 
causes  themselves. 

ROBINSON.  —  But  you  are  talking  of  history, 
not  literature. 

BROWN.  —  Literature  is  the  only  real  history. 
The  main  records  of  the  past  are  not  contained  in 
Gibbon,  in  Guizot,  in  Egyptian  tombs,  or  in  the 
fossils  of  the  Wind  River  beds,  but  in  the  books 
of  men  who  have  recounted  their  experience  of 
life.  From  their  experience  we  learn  how  best 
to  fulfil  the  duty  of  self-preservation. 


170  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

ROBINSON.  —  You  give  literature  a  terribly 
utilitarian  twist.  You  present  the  obverse  of  the 
Delphic  motto,  Know  Thyself ;  you  say,  Know 
Other  Men. 

JONES.  —  Brown  is  right  so  far  as  he  goes ;  but 
he  stops  short.  Brown  is  too  eager  to  meet  the 
men  of  science  on  their  own  ground ;  he  forgets 
what  we  of  the  cloth  regard  as  more  important 
than  the  body.  The  primary  function  of  litera 
ture  is  to  feed  the  soul. 

ROBINSON.  —  The  soul  is  a  matter  of  meta 
physics  ;  but  literature  is  a  part  of  our  earth,  it 
grows  in  the  ground  like  an  oak.  Define  what 
you  mean. 

JONES.  —  I  can't ;  the  soul  won't  submit  to 
definition.  It  is  illimitable.  It  is  as  much  a 
yearning  as  anything  else.  On  the  one  hand  it 
comes  into  relation  with  God,  on  the  other  to 
matter.  It's  relation  to  material  things  is  to  take 
what  they  have  to  give,  to  nourish  itself  by  that 
taking,  to  feed  on  love,  on  self-purification,  to 
grow  strong  by  detaching  itself  from  hate,  from 
vulgarity,  from  grossness.  The  preservation  of 
the  soul  is  quite  as  important  as  the  preservation 
of  the  body,  and  it  needs  not  only  the  robust  food 
offered  by  daily  life,  but  the  daintier  food,  often 
more  nourishing,  more  invigorating,  of  literature. 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  171 

For  in  literature  the  souls  of  men  express  them 
selves  with  more  freedom  and  greater  clearness 
than  they  do  in  actual  life.  It  is  hard  to  express 
the  soul  in  deeds ;  for  life  offers  many  hinderances, 
and  the  deeds  of  the  soul  are  often  blurred  by  the 
trivial  or  gross  happenings  of  life,  so  that  they  no 
longer  exhibit  the  qualities  of  the  soul,  whereas 
in  literature  the  soul  has  been  able  to  reveal  itself 
most  completely.  So  I  value  literature  chiefly 
as  the  record  of  human  souls.  A  knowledge  of 
spiritual  life  in  others  helps  my  own  spiritual  life. 

ROBINSON. — That  may  apply  to  Thomas-a- 
Kempis  or  the  Vita  Nuova,  but  how  about  Madame 
Bovary,  or  //  Fuoco  ? 

JONES.  — The  records  of  a  sick  soul,  of  a  dying 
soul,  teach  lessons  as  well  as  the  records  of  a 
healthy  soul.  The  pathology  of  the  soul  is  a 
necessary  part  of  spiritual  knowledge. 

ROBINSON.  —  You  fellows  take  professional 
views.  Your  wits  have  been  subdued  to  your 
callings.  Life  is  not  an  endeavor  to  attain  or  to 
ward  off,  it  is  a  matter  of  entertainment;  it  is 
neither  a  school  nor  a  chapel,  it  is  a  theatre. 
Melancholy  Jaques  said  the  last  word  on  that 
subject.  Men  and  women  are  players,  endlessly 
playing  tragedy,  comedy,  farce,  or  more  commonly 
a  piece  composed  of  all  three.  We  must  look  at 


172  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

life  objectively.  The  spectator's  business  is  to 
interest  himself  in  the  plot,  to  welcome  the  thrill 
of  tragedy,  to  smile  at  the  comic,  to  laugh  at  the 
farcical,  and  all  the  time  to  take  his  presence  at 
the  play  as  a  privilege,  to  value  the  lighted  theatre 
far  higher  than  the  unknown  without,  where  there 
is  neither  light  nor  sound.  Literature  is  the  record 
of  past  life.  It  is  a  play  within  the  play  and  to  be 
taken  at  the  same  estimate  as  life,  as  an  oppor 
tunity  for  a  most  varied  entertainment. 

BROWN.  —  If  our  views  are  professional,  your 
view  is  the  most  professional  of  all.  This  universe 
as  we  see  it,  the  result  of  toil,  patience,  energy, 
beyond  the  reach  of  man's  imagination  — 

ROBINSON.  —  Exists  for  the  sake  of  the  dilet 
tante.  Precisely;  there  is  no  other  possible 
hypothesis. 

JONES.  — Well,  let  us  not  wander  too  far  from 
the  subject.  How  does  all  this  apply  to  the  three 
literatures  that  Mr.  Loeb  has  gathered  together 
for  the  sake  of  challenging  us  ? 

II 

BROWN.  —  Our  opinions  of  literature  are,  as  I 
understand  them,  of  this  general  purport.  Litera 
ture,  according  to  me,  shows  us  the  nature  of  our 
fellow  men ;  that  is,  it  portrays  those  manifesta- 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  173 

tions  of  force  which  most  affect  us  during  our 
pilgrimage  through  life,  and  therefore  enables 
us  to  use  those  forces  to  our  advantage  or  to  pre 
vent  them  from  doing  us  hurt.  According  to 
Jones,  literature,  being  in  its  deepest  sense  the  tale 
of  the  spiritual  experiences  of  men,  of  the  success 
or  failure  of  the  human  soul,  teaches  us  how  to 
educate  our  own  souls.  Or,  if  we  follow  Robinson, 
and  regard  life  primarily  as  a  spectacle,  then  litera 
ture  adds  immensely  to  the  richness  of  the  show 
by  supplementing  the  incompleteness  of  the  pres 
ent  with  the  greater  completeness  of  the  past,  and 
so  adds  to  the  value  of  life. 

If  we  commit  ourselves  to  these  principles,  how 
do  we  apply  them  to  the  three  literatures  which 
the  first  volumes  of  the  Loeb  Classical  Library 
present  to  our  attention ;  how,  to  begin  with,  to 
the  literature  of  early  Christianity  ?  That  seems 
to  fall  rather  more  in  your  province,  Jones,  than 
in  ours.  What  do  you  think  of  the  volumes  of 
the  Apostolic  Fathers  and  of  St.  Augustine  ? 

JONES.  —  I  fear  I  shall  have  to  begin,  as  I  used 
to  begin  my  lectures  at  the  theological  school, 
with  some  general  statements.  Will  you  please 
bear  with  me,  Robinson  ? 

ROBINSON.  —  Reverie,  if  not  sleep,  is  always 
open  to  me. 


174  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

JONES.  —  Christianity  is  the  fruit  of  the  mater 
nal  tenderness  in  humanity;  it  was  born  of  the 
great  throbs  of  compassion  for  mortal  sorrows, 
and  at  birth  dedicated  itself  to  the  ennoblement 
of  mankind,  for  in  ennoblement,  as  it  believed, 
lies  our  only  hope  of  happiness.  The  first  dis 
ciples  were  sensitive  men,  ignorant  of,  or  indif 
ferent  to,  the  pleasures  of  the  world,  who  rejoiced 
in  the  belief  that  self-sacrifice  for  an  ideal  is  the 
solution  of  life's  enigma.  The  history  of  the 
beginning  of  Christianity  is  the  most  famous  litera 
ture  in  our  western  world,  and,  I  suppose,  fulfils 
Robinson's  requirements  as  well  as  Brown's  and 
mine. 

In  that  first  period  of  Christian  history  the 
sacred  fire  was  lighted.  In  the  second  period  the 
task  was  of  a  different  order ;  that  second  task  was 
to  keep  the  sacred  fire  alive,  and  so,  in  order  to 
protect  it  from  the  winds  and  rain,  the  disciples 
of  the  first  disciples  built  about  it  the  great  edifice 
of  the  Church.  In  the  book  of  the  Apostolic 
Fathers,  which  contains  the  Epistles  of  Clement, 
of  Ignatius,  and  of  Polycarp,  this  devout  process  is 
plainly  at  work.  [Jones  goes  to  the  table  and  picks 
up  "The  Apostolic  Fathers."]  The  scene  is  in 
the  Roman  Empire,  the  time  is  at  the  end  of  the 
first  and  the  beginning  of  the  second  century,  and 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  175 

yet  we  are  at  once  aware  that  we  have  left  the 
precincts  of  the  ancient  world  and  have  entered 
the  purlieus  of  the  Middle  Ages.  There,  before 
us,  crowned  with  light  or  darkness,  as  you  may 
please  to  think,  rises  the  mighty  fabric  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Church.  Certainly,  my  dear  Robin 
son,  by  this  event  the  theatre  of  history  was  greatly 
enriched. 

ROBINSON.  —  The  early  Christians  make  a  most 
interesting  episode.  But  you  must  not  exagger 
ate  their  piety.  The  Emperor  Hadrian,  who  was 
inclined,  like  me,  to  look  upon  life  as  a  theatre, 
wrote  to  his  friend  Servianus  a  few  words  about 
the  Christians  in  Egypt.  "Egypt,  which  you 
praised  to  me  so  warmly,  my  dear  Servianus,  I 
found  altogether  frivolous,  unstable,  and  shifting 
with  every  breath  of  rumor.  Their  one  god  is 
money;  him,  Christians,  Jews,  and  Gentiles  alike 
adore." 

JONES.  —  The  emperor  was  looking  for  diversion 
and  failed  to  get  anything  more  than  diversion; 
and  so  when  he  wished  to  satisfy  his  longing  for 
beauty,  for  an  element  of  poetry  in  life,  he  could 
rise  no  higher  than  to  gaze  at  Antinous.  The 
Christians  of  Egypt  may  have  adored  Mammon, 
but  there  were  Christians  in  Syria  and  Asia 
Minor  who  did  not.  Here  in  this  book  is  proof. 


176  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

It  contains  poetry,  exquisite  poetry ;  it  asserts  that 
poetry  is  the  order  of  the  universe,  that  poetry 
is  truth.  It  is  worth  while,  in  our  search  after 
nourishment  for  the  soul,  to  come  upon  men  who 
believe  this.  In  actual  life  there  may  be  many 
such  people,  but  they  are  hard  to  find ;  those 
who  live  poetry  are,  in  my  experience,  very 
shamefaced  about  it.  Let  me  read  you  this. 
[Reads  from  Clement.]  "The  heavens  moving 
at  his  appointment  are  subject  to  Him  in 
peace ; "  —  but  no,  that  is  too  long,  I  will  merely 
read  you  his  prayer. 

"Grant  us  to  hope  on  thy  name,  the  source  of  all 
creation,  open  the  eyes  of  our  heart  to  know  thee, 
that  thou  alone  art  the  highest  in  the  highest,  and 
remainest  holy  among  the  holy.  Thou  dost 
humble  the  pride  of  the  haughty,  thou  dost 
destroy  the  imaginings  of  nations,  thou  dost  raise 
up  the  humble  and  abase  the  lofty,  thou  makest 
rich  and  makest  poor,  thou  dost  slay  and  make 
alive,  thou  alone  art  the  finder  of  spirits  and  art 
God  of  all  flesh,  thou  dost  look  on  the  abysses, 
thou  seest  into  the  works  of  man,  thou  art  the 
helper  of  those  in  danger,the  saviour  of  those  in  des 
pair,  the  creator  and  watcher  over  every  spirit.  .  .  . 
Save  those  of  us  who  are  in  affliction,  have  mercy 
on  the  lowly,  raise  the  fallen,  show  thyself  to  those 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  177 

in  need,  heal  the  sick,  turn  again  the  wanderers 
of  thy  people,  feed  the  hungry,  ransom  our  pris 
oners,  raise  up  the  weak,  comfort  the  faint-hearted  ; 
let  all  'nations  know  thee,  that  thou  art  God 
alone/  and  that  Jesus  Christ  is  thy  child,  and  that 
we  are  thy  people,  and  the  sheep  of  thy  pasture." 
Is  there  not  something  to  be  learned  from  people 
whose  life  is  centred  in  poetry  ?  Does  not  their 
idea  of  what  is  worth  while  teach  us  something, 
which  we,  looking  about  us,  would  not  be  able 
to  find  for  ourselves  ?  Do  we  not  need,  in  a  world 
preoccupied  with  chemistry,  physics,  biology,  to 
remember  that  many  men  have  found  extra 
ordinary  help  in  prayer?  Listen  to  this:  "Love 
of  joy  and  of  gladness,"  says  the  epistle  of  Barna 
bas,  "is  the  testimony  of  the  works  of  righteous 
ness."  "None  of  these  things  [sundry  duties  to 
be  done]  are  unknown  to  you  if  you  possess  perfect 
faith  towards  Jesus  Christ,  and  love,  which  are  the 
beginning  and  end  of  life ;  for  the  beginning  is 
faith  and  the  end  is  love,  and  when  the  two  are 
joined  together  in  unity,  it  is  God,  and  all  other 
noble  things  follow  after  them.  No  man  who 
professes  faith  sins,  nor  does  he  hate  who  has 
obtained  love."  On  these  wings  the  early  Chris 
tians  flew  high  above  poverty,  sickness,  oppres 
sion,  envy,  and  meanness;  they  found  the  key 

N 


178  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

that  unlocked  for  them  the  riches  of  life;  they 
discovered  what  we  are  all  seeking ;  they  became, 
as  Barnabas  says,  reWa  tv<j>poarvvr)<i,  Children  of 
Mirth.  If  a  knowledge  of  early  Christian  litera 
ture  will  help  us  to  learn  from  them,  there  is 
something  to  be  said  for  it. 

ROBINSON.  —  I  agree  that  the  picture  of  these 
men  dragging  their  chains  from  Antioch  to  Rome, 
merely  fearful  lest  some  untoward  chance  should 
deprive  them  of  the  joy  of  being  devoured  by 
wild  beasts,  is  highly  melodramatic.  The  Roman 
amphitheatre  has  claims  on  the  gratitude  of 
posterity. 

BROWN.  —  The  interest  really  lies  in  the  sin 
gular  power  that  these  men  displayed.  Here  is  a 
belief-engendered  energy  that  shames  the  dynamo. 
Polycarp  had  a  countless  line  of  ancestors,  stretch 
ing  immeasurably  back  to  the  beginnings  of 
organic  life  on  this  globe,  and  each  parent  in  that 
countless  line  transmitted  to  his  child  one  great 
duty,  to  shun  death  ;  and  for  unnumbered  genera 
tions  every  child  obeyed,  until  there  in  Antioch, 
Polycarp,  under  the  influence  of  a  fantastic  belief, 
broke  that  primal  law  as  if  it  had  been  a  dry  twig. 
In  fact,  these  Christians  claimed  to  control  a  very 
potent  form  of  energy,  and  their  method  of 
exercising  that  control  was  by  prayer.  This  is  a 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  179 

matter  of  psychological  interest ;  we  cannot  study 
this  power  too  closely,  nor  can  we  make  too  many 
experiments  in  the  hope  of  becoming  able  to  draw 
upon  it  at  will.  I  think  that  Jones  is  making  out 
a  good  case  for  his  view  of  the  value  of  literature. 

JONES.  —  As  I  seem  to  have  the  floor,  I  will  go 
ahead  with  this  other  book,  these  two  red  vol 
umes,  The  Confessions  of  St.  Augustine,  which  in 
point  of  history  constitutes  another  stage  in  the 
development  of  Christianity.  The  pages,  it  is 
true,  contain  a  great  mist  of  rhetorical  piety  (if 
that  phrase  is  not  too  unsympathetic) ;  but  out 
of  this  mist  every  now  and  again  emerge  some 
human  details,  with  the  peculiar  charm  that  bits 
of  landscape  have  when  a  fog  lifts  and  the  greens 
of  field  and  wood  shine  in  summer  sunlight. 
St.  Augustine  certainly  has  not  neglected  to  gratify 
Robinson's  taste  for  the  theatre.  But  the  real 
significance  of  the  Confessions  lies  in  its  contribu 
tion  to  our  understanding  of  the  soul.  Will  you 
bear  with  me  while  I  read  a  little  more  ? 

BROWN.  —  Fire  away. 

JONES. — The  twelfth  chapter  of  the  eighth 
book  recounts  Augustine's  retreat  to  a  garden 
after  a  struggle  between  the  Spirit  and  the  Flesh. 
It  tells  how  a  rush  of  emotion  overcame  him, 
how  he  flung  himself  down  under  a  fig  tree  and 


l8o  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

cried  out  between  his  sobs :  [reads]  "And  then,  O 
Lord,  how  long,  how  long,  Lord,  wilt  thou  be 
angry  ?  for  ever  ?  Remember  not  our  former 
iniquities  (for  I  found  myself  to  be  still  enthralled 
by  them).  Yea,  I  sent  up  these  miserable  excla 
mations,  How  long  ?  how  long  still,  'to-morrow 
and  to-morrow'?  Why  not  now?  Wherefore 
even  this  very  hour  is  there  not  an  end  put  to  my 
uncleanness  ?"  Then  he  heard  a  young  voice, 
like  a  boy's  or  girl's,  say  in  a  sort  of  chant,  "Tolle, 
lege,  —  Take  up,  and  read,"  So  he  went  back 
to  the  apostle's  book  and  read,  "Put  ye  on  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  make  not  provision  for  the 
flesh,  to  fulfil  the  lusts  thereof."  He  needed  to 
read  no  further,  "for  instantly .  .  .all  the  darkness 
of  doubting  vanished  away."  His  friend,  Alypius, 
hearing  of  Augustine's  experience,  shares  in  its 
effect.  They  go  to  Monica,  —  Inde  ad  matrem 
ingredimur,  indie amus :  gaudet.  There  is  a  sim 
plicity  and  directness  in  the  Latin  that  is  ill- 
rendered  by  "From  that  place  we  went  to  my 
mother  and  told  her.  She  was  overjoyed." 

And  if  any  one  is  impatient  to  learn,  in  the  space 
of  a  single  page,  the  cause  of  the  triumph  of 
Christianity,  let  him  turn  to  the  tenth  chapter  of 
the  ninth  book,  where  Augustine  and  Monica, 
while  they  wait  at  Ostia  for  a  ship  to  carry  them 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  l8l 

home  to  Carthage,  commune  with  one  another  on 
their  religion,  leaning  out  of  the  window  that 
looked  into  the  garden.  They  are  considering 
what  the  Gospel  means  by  the  words,  "Enter  thou 
into  the  joy  of  thy  Lord."  I  use  my  own  trans 
lation  in  part.  Saint  Augustine  says  :  [reads] 

"Suppose  that  the  tumult  of  the  flesh  be  still, 
that  the  phantasm  of  the  earth,  the  waters,  the 
air,  and  the  heavens  be  silent,  that  the  soul  itself 
be  silent,  and  by  not  thinking  of  itself  transcend 
itself,  that  dreams  be  silent  and  all  the  revelations 
of  the  imagination,  and  every  tongue  and  every 
sign ;  suppose  that  every  moving  thing  be  silent 
altogether  (for,  if  any  one  listen,  all  things  say, 
we  have  not  made  ourselves,  but  He  that  is  ever 
lasting  made  us).  Suppose,  after  they  have  said 
this,  that  they  keep  silent,  since  they  have  lifted 
up  our  ears  to  Him  that  made  them,  and  that  He 
speak  alone,  not  by  them  but  of  Himself,  so  that 
we  hear  his  voice,  not  by  tongue  of  flesh,  neither 
by  voice  of  angel,  nor  by  sound  of  thunder,  nor 
by  the  riddle  of  allegory,  but  that  we  hear  Him, 
whom  in  his  creatures  we  love,  that  we  hear  Him 
without  them  —  just  as  we  now  reach  out  and  by 
swift  thought  touch  the  eternal  wisdom  that 
overspreads  all  things.  Suppose  that  this  exalta 
tion  of  soul  continue,  and  that  all  visions  that  are 


1 82  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

not  in  keeping  be  taken  away,  but  this  vision 
ravish  the  seer,  swallow  him  up,  and  immerse  him 
in  inward  joy,  so  that  his  life  forever  shall  be  such 
as  was  his  moment  of  understanding,  for  which  we 
have  yearned.  Is  not  this  :  Enter  thou  into  the 
joy  of  thy  Lord  ?" 

BROWN.  —  You  are  right.  Such  lives  are 
lessons  in  the  largest  sense.  What  you  have  read 
is  not  merely  the  meditation  of  a  philosopher, 
pondering  over  an  hypothesis  that  the  mind  might 
entertain,  but  a  vital,  creative  energy  sprung  from 
a  particular,  definite  belief.  Such  a  life  as  his 
gives  significance  to  metaphysics.  Here  is  a  force 
as  little  understood  as  radium  or  the  magnetic 
pole,  and  it  seems  to  have  a  greater  power  than 
they ;  Augustine's  belief  dominated  his  life,  and 
through  him  dominated  a  world,  bringing  noble 
ness  and  joy.  I  quite  agree  with  you,  Jones. 

ROBINSON.  — As  a  spectator,  I  applaud.  Had 
Augustine  not  lived,  my  seat  in  this  singular 
playhouse  would  have  been  of  less  value. 

Ill 

BROWN.  —  After  all,  the  pagan  classics  of  Rome 
and  Greece  constitute  the  bulk  of  the  Loeb 
Library.  It  is  they  that  ask,  "What  do  we  mean 
to  you  ?" 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  183 

JONES.  —  I  suppose  that  you  have  in  mind  their 
direct  influence  upon  us ;  for  indirectly,  we  all 
admit,  they  have  affected  us  enormously. 

BROWN.  —  Yes,  their  direct  effect  upon  us. 

ROBINSON.  —  Unfortunately,  they  have  no 
direct  effect  upon  us. 

JONES.  —  Because  we  neglect  them  ? 

ROBINSON.  —  No;  but  because  with  our  in 
heritance,  we  cannot,  or  at  least  do  not,  look  upon 
the  classics  with  our  own  eyes. 

BROWN.  —  Explain  yourself. 

ROBINSON.  —  We  are  children  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance.  That  movement,  so  far  as  it  con 
cerns  the  classical  world,  was  an  interpretation ; 
and  the  interpretation  that  the  Renaissance 
adopted  has  been  handed  down  to  us.  This 
tradition  has  determined  how  we  shall  look,  how 
we  shall  see,  what,  in  short,  our  conception  of  the 
Greek  and  Latin  classics  shall  be. 

JONES. — You  are  not  speaking  of  scholars, 
are  you  ? 

'ROBINSON.  —  No;  I  speak  of  the  conventional 
conception  of  the  classics  entertained  by  persons 
who  are  not  scholars.  Scholars  have  their  own 
academic  conventions  concerning  the  classics, 
contrived  by  Selden,  Person,  Jebb,  and  their 
coadjutors  of  Paris,  Leipsic,  and  Berlin ;  with 


1 84  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

that  I  have  nothing  to  do.  I  refer  to  the  definite, 
conventional  conception  of  the  classics  that  has 
become  a  part  of  our  western  culture.  This 
conception  was  shaped  for  us  by  the  Italians  of  the 
Renaissance.  To  them  the  great  world  of  Rome, 
of  law,  of  culture,  of  civilization,  that  lifted  its 
distant  head  above  the  coarse,  inane  happenings 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  was  a  golden  time  —  Saturnia 
regna;  it  appeared  to  them  as  the  Alps  first  ap 
peared  to  young  Ruskin,  rising  in  snow-capp'd, 
inaccessible  glory.  In  this  matter,  we  are  disciples 
of  the  Renaissance.,  We  dress  our  minds  in 
clothes  of  its  fashioning.  Dante's  invocation  to 
Virgil,  in  the  wild  wood  in  which  he  had  lost  his 

Or  se*  tu  quel  Virgilio  ? 

is,  as  it  were,  the  first  modern  cry  of  greeting  to  the 
great  figures  of  the  ancient  world.  Then  follows 
Petrarch's  adoration  of  Cicero,  and  Boccaccio's 
eulogy  of  Rome.  All  the  stirrings  of  the  Italian 
mind  turned  toward  the  mighty  past  of  Rome. 
From  Italy  this  Italian  conception  of  the  classics 
spread  to  the  north.  France  took  fire.  On  and 
on  the  admiration  of  the  achievements  of  anti 
quity  proceeded,  invading  England  and  Germany ; 
and  finally  in  the  eighteenth  century  it  burst  out 
again  with  renewed  power. 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  185 

But,  as  you  know,  Brown,  far  better  than  I,  of 
all  this  multitude  of  admirers,  imitators,  and 
eulogists  of  the  classical  world,  those  who  have  had 
most  effect  in  fashioning  our  popular  idea  of  what 
that  world  means,  are  the  great  Germans,  Winckel- 
mann,  Lessing,  and  Goethe.  They,  more  than 
the  others,  justified  the  tradition  and  imposed  upon 
us  the  conception  that  the  antique  world  was  com 
pact  of  sobriety,  poise,  measure,  and  proportion, 
qualities  that  we  find  crammed  into  our  word 
"classical."  Lessing  says,  somewhere,  "It  was 
the  happy  privilege  of  the  ancients  never  to  pass 
beyond  or  stop  short  of  the  proper  limit." 
Winckelmann  expressed  the  same  idea,  and  Goethe 
spent  a  lifetime  seeking  to  impress  this  same  con 
ception  upon  conduct.  "A  man,"  he  says,  "may 
accomplish  much  through  directing  individual 
abilities  to  one  goal ;  he  may  accomplish  the 
unusual  through  the  union  of  several  capacities ; 
but  the  wholly  unpredictable,  the  Unique,  he 
achieves  only  if  all  his  powers  unite  together  in 
even  measure.  The  last  was  the  happy  lot  of 
the  Ancients,  especially  the  Greeks  of  the  best 
time." 

BROWN.  —  Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  Goethe's 
reference  to  the  Greeks,  in  spite  of  Winckelmann's 
and  Lessing's  belief  that  they  were  holding  up 


1 86  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

Greek  models  to  the  world,  in  spite  of  the  French 
classical  tragedy,  or  the  universal  admiration  of 
Homer,  the  meaning  of  the  word  "classical"  for 
them  was  Latin,  not  Greek. 

JONES.  —  That  is  true,  of  course. 

BROWN.  —  Therefore,  although  sobriety,  meas 
ure,  repose,  are  contained  in  our  word  classical, 
there  is  a  definiteness,  a  circumscription,  a  con 
ventionality,  a  practicality,  in  the  phrase,  that 
could  only  have  come  from  Latin  influence.  Our 
conception  of  the  classics  is  Latin  or  at  best 
Graeco-Latin.  If  the  shapers  of  the  classical  tra 
dition  had  been  bred  upon  Greece  instead  of  upon 
Rome,  they  never  would  have  attempted  to  cram 
the  meaning  of  ancient  Greece  into  a  conception 
which  could  be  represented  by  a  single  phrase, 
even  when  that  phrase  —  sobriety,  measure, 
repose  —  has  so  much  convenience  to  recommend 
it.  You  agree  to  this,  Robinson,  don't  you  ? 

ROBINSON.  —  Oh,  yes ;  you  are  perfectly  right. 
My  point  was  that  we  accept  the  classics  upon  a 
wholly  traditional  valuation ;  and  I  was  going  to 
add  that  one  of  the  great  services  which  Mr. 
Loeb's  classical  library  renders  is  that  we  are 
morally  obliged  to  look  at  the  classics,  so  far  as  it  is 
possible,  with  our  own  eyes  and  make  up  our  own 
minds  about  them.  We  must  take  the  word 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  187 

classical  down  from  its  pedestal  and  see  what  it 
really  means. 

JONES. — You  were  quite  right,  Robinson,  to 
call  our  attention  to  this  tradition,  but  you  have 
digressed  from  the  point.  Let  us  get  back  to  the 
subject  we  started  with  :  What  do  these  Greek  and 
Latin  classics  mean  to  us  ? 

ROBINSON.  —  Excuse  me,  parson,  but  I  meant 
to  remove  an  obstacle  from  our  path. 

JONES.  —  It  is  for  me,  sir,  to  apologize;  you 
were  wholly  right.  Unluckily  the  clock  warns  me 
that  we  have  gone  past  half  our  time. 

IV 

BROWN.  —  We  all  agree,  I  suppose,  that  the 
study  of  poise,  measure,  sobriety,  self-control, 
would  be  of  great  advantage  to  us.  And  if  tra 
dition,  no  matter  how  it  originated,  ascribes  to 
the  literature  of  Greece  and  Rome  those  qualities, 
it  is  worth  while  to  consider  the  matter  and  find 
out  if  there  be  any  truth  in  that  tradition. 

I  think  that  a  hasty  glance  at  Greek  literature 
will  contradict  tradition  very  flatly,  and  show  that 
these  traits  were  no  more  characteristic  of  the 
Greeks  as  human  beings,  than  of  ourselves. 
[Goes  to  bookcase  and  takes  down  one  or  two  books.] 
Take  Homer,  and  you  see  that  the  Greeks  acted 


1 88  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

under  the  push  of  passion  with  the  energy  of  their 
southern  temperament.  When  Achilles  is  angry 
with  Agamemnon  he  says :  "Thou  heavy  with 
wine,  thou  with  face  of  dog  and  heart  of  deer." 
And  when  he  has  struck  down  Hector  of  the 
glancing  plume,  he  spurns  his  entreaties:  "En 
treat  me  not,  dog,  by  knees  or  parents.  Would 
that  my  heart's  desire  could  so  bid  me  myself  to 
carve  and  eat  raw  thy  flesh,  for  the  evil  thou  hast 
wrought  me,  as  surely  there  is  none  that  shall  keep 
the  dogs  from  thee,  not  even  should  they  bring  ten 
or  twentyfold  ransom  and  here  weigh  it  out,  and 
promise  even  more;  not  even  were  Priam,  Dar- 
dano's  son,  to  bid  pay  thy  weight  in  gold,  not  even 
so  shall  thy  lady  mother  lay  thee  on  a  bed  to 
mourn  her  son,  but  dogs  and  birds  shall  devour 
thee  utterly."  And  after  Hector  is  dead,  "Other 
sons  of  the  Achaians  ran  up  around,  who  gazed 
upon  the  stature  and  marvelous  goodliness  of 
Hector.  Nor  did  any  stand  by  but  wounded  him, 
and  thus  would  many  a  man  say  looking  toward 
his  neighbor:  'Go  to,  of  a  truth  far  easier  to 
handle  is  Hector  now  than  when  he  burnt  the  ships 
with  blazing  fire.'  Thus  would  many  a  man  say, 
and  wound  him  as  he  stood  hard  by." 

Achilles  is  a  passionate  child,  and  the  Homeric 
Greeks  an  emotional,  excitable  people.     In  Soph- 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  189 

ocles,  you  remember  how  the  mad  Ajax  is  de 
scribed  as  mistaking  sheep  for  his  enemies.  "Of 
part,  he  cut  the  throats  on  the  floor  within ; 
some,  hewing  their  sides,  he  rent  asunder.  Then 
he  caught  up  two  white-footed  rams ;  he  sheared 
off  the  head  of  one,  and  the  tongue-tip,  and  flung 
them  away ;  the  other  he  bound  upright  to  a  pillar, 
and  seized  a  heavy  thong  of  horse-gear,  and  flogged 
with  shrill,  double  lash,  while  he  uttered  revilings 
which  a  god,  and  no  mortal,  had  taught." 

The  Trojan  Women  is  one  long  wail,  and  Phil- 
octetes  is  almost  as  full  of  self-pity  as  Obermann. 
Even  the  aphorisms  of  Sophocles  are  often  as 
intemperate  as  the  utterances  of  the  Hebrew 
prophets  : 

"Searching  out  all  things,  thou  in  most  men's 
acts  wilt  find  but  baseness." 

"A  woman's  oaths  I  write  upon  the  waves." 

"Man  is  but  breath  and  shadow,  nothing  more." 

JONES.  —  How  about  the  lyric  poets  ? 

BROWN.  —  From  Archilochus  to  Bion  there  is 
passionate  intensity.  Passion  can  never  be  tem 
perate,  it  forgets  all  else  and  concentrates  itself 
on  its  own  piercing  sensation  ;  that  was  true  of  the 
Greeks  as  of  all  hot-blooded  human  beings  — 

ROBINSON.  —  I  suppose  that  those  early  Ital 
ians  really  based  their  classical  formula  on  archi- 


190  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

tecture,  on  the  Greek  temple  and  the  Roman  arch, 
and  on  sculpture,  much  more  than  on  literature. 

JONES.  —  Critics  have  always  confounded  the 
arts ;  they  apply  terms  of  painting  to  music,  of 
music  to  architecture,  of  architecture  to  literature, 
and  call  their  confusion  criticism. 

BROWN.  —  Poor  fellows !  Perhaps  you  need 
not  put  them  all  into  one  category.  But  Robin 
son  is  right,  I  think,  in  assuming  that  the  tradi 
tional  idea  of  Greek  literature  has  been  taken  from 
Greek  sculpture  and  architecture.  The  makers 
of  the  tradition  did  not  know  Greek  literature. 
You  cannot  compress  the  Greeks'  expression  of 
their  experience  of  life  into  a  single  formula. 
Professor  Wheeler  says  that  ^Eschylus  is  "mystic 
and  transcendental";  Professor  Shorey  that 
"the  antithesis  of  classical  and  realistic  is  as  false 
as  the  opposition  of  classic  and  romantic."  Mr. 
Gilbert  Murray  speaks  of  the  "terrible  emotional" 
power  possessed  by  Thucydides ;  and  in  another 
passage  he  warns  us  of  the  danger  of  serious  mis 
apprehension  that  lies  in  inferences  based  upon 
the  judgment  of  the  scribes  who  selected  but  a 
small  portion  of  the  great  mass  of  Greek  literature 
for  preservation.  [Takes  up  magazine  and  reads] : 
"When  one  reads  accounts  in  textbooks  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  Greek  mind  :  its  statuesque 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  191 

quality,  its  love  of  proportion  and  order  and 
common  sense,  its  correct  rhetoric  and  correct 
taste,  its  anthropomorphism  and  care  for  form,  and 
all  those  other  virtues  which  sometimes  seem,  when 
added  together,  to  approach  so  dangerously  near 
the  total  of  dull  correctness  and  spiritual  vacuity, 
it  is  well  to  remember  that  the  description  applies 
not  to  what  the  ancient  Greeks  wrote,  but  to  what 
the  late  Roman  and  Byzantine  scholars  pre 
served." 

ROBINSON.  —  How  about  Latin  literature  ? 
You  stated  that  the  tradition  of  classical  sobriety, 
so  far  as  it  is  based  on  literature  at  all,  is  based 
much  more  on  the  Latin  classics  than  on  the 
Greek  ?  Perhaps  Latin  will  justify,  at  least  to 
some  extent,  the  traditional  view. 

BROWN.  —  I  can  see  no  better  ground  for  the 
tradition  with  regard  to  Latin  than  to  Greek. 
Italian  tradition  having  assumed  that  the  ancient 
Roman  character  was  like  the  masonry  of  the 
Colosseum,  went  further  and  assumed  that  Latin 
literature  must  have  depicted  it  as  such.  But  if 
we  go  behind  the  tradition  and  look  directly  at  the 
Latin  literature  which  depicts  Roman  character, 
we  find  that  the  ancient  Romans  were  very  much 
like  ourselves,  with  no  more  poise,  measure, 
sobriety,  or  repose  than  we  Americans  of  to-day 


192  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

possess,  if  indeed  as  much.  They  were  men  like 
ourselves.  Terence's  famous  line, 

Homo  sum :  humani  nil  a  me  alienum  puto, 

sums  up,  as  well  as  is  possible  in  a  single  line,  our 
two  modern  characteristics,  human  curiosity  and 
human  sympathy.  Terence's  dramatis  persona 
have  no  suggestion  of  brick,  travertine,  or  mortar. 
Take  the  familiar  lines  of  Catullus, 

Vivamus,  mea  Lesbia,  atque  amemus, 
Rumoresque  senum  severiorum 
Omnes  unius  aestimemus  assis. 
Let  us  live,  my  Lesbia,  and  love, 
And  all  the  carping  of  stern  old  men 
Let  us  rate  at  a  penny's  worth. 

Read  the  verses  in  which  Propertius  bids  his 
fellow-poet  Gallus  beware  of  falling  in  love  with 
Cynthia, 

Non  ego  turn  potero  solacia  ferre  roganti, 
Were  you  then  to  come  in  supplication,  I  could  not 
console  you. 

And  again,  take  his  complaint, 

Me  mediae  noctes,  me  sidera  prona  jacentem, 

Frigidaque  Eoo  me  dolet  aura  gelu. 
I  lie  prostrate,  pitied  by  midnight,  by  the  setting  stars 
And  the  air  cold  with  the  frost  of  morning. 

Or,  since  Propertius  fills  one  of  the  first  volumes 
in  the  Loeb  Classical  Library,  read  the  beautiful 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  193 

last  farewell  of  Cornelia,  daughter  of  Cornelius 
Scipio,  to  her  husband  Paullus, 

Fungere  maternis  vicibus,  pater. 
You,  Father,  must  fill  a  mother's  place. 

Evidently  the  Romans  had  the  same  affections 
and  passions  as  we  moderns.  The  verses  of 
Tibullus  to  Delia  tell  the  same  tale : 

Te  videam  suprema  mihi  cum  venerit  hora : 

Te  teneam  moriens  deficiente  manu ! 

Thee  shall  I  look  at  when  my  last  hour  conies; 

Thee,  as  I  die,  my  failing  hand  shall  hold. 

ROBINSON.  —  But,  if  you  disregard  the  meaning 
and  listen  only  to  the  words,  you  find  a  dignity,  a 
massiveness,  in  the  Latin  syllables  that  modern 
literature  seldom  or  never  has. 

BROWN.  —  There  you  come  close  to  the  cause 
of  the  tradition.  Compare  Italian  with  Latin 
and  you  perceive  why  the  humanists  of  the 
Renaissance  found  poise,  measure,  sobriety,  and 
repose  in  classical  literature. 

JONES.  —  I  am  a  little  confused.  Am  I  to 
understand  that  you  wholly  reject  the  tradition  of 
poise,  measure,  sobriety  and  self-control,  as  having 
no  affinity  with  classical  literature  ? 

BROWN.  —  Not  at  all.  The  tradition,  begun 
by  the  Italians  of  the  Renaissance,  is  based  on  a 
false  analogy  to  sculpture  and  architecture,  and 


194  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

on  the  contrast  between  our  modern  Romance 
languages  and  Latin;  but  I  believe  that  those 
qualities,  though  they  do  not  lie  in  the  character 
or  disposition  of  the  ancients,  are  qualities  of 
their  method  of  expression. 


ROBINSON.  —  Translation  is  the  work  of  a 
hod-carrier.  It  carries  from  one  language  to 
another  only  the  grosser  parts  that  can  be  loaded 
and  ferried  across ;  it  leaves  behind  both  form  and 
color.  Mathematics  are  the  same  in  German, 
Italian,  and  English;  but  the  simplest  word  has 
an  individuality  as  marked  as  that  of  a  human 
child.  To  the  ears  of  familiarity  and  affection 
no  other  sequence  of  syllables  can  reproduce  the 
tenderness  of  the  mother  tongue.  By  means  of 
the  Loeb  Classical  Library  the  reader  of  little 
Latin  and  less  Greek  has  an  opportunity  to  turn 
from  the  English  and  pick  up  a  phrase  or  two,  a 
word,  perhaps,  here  and  there;  merely  to  do  so 
puts  him  in  the  spiritual  presence  of  the  original. 
He  is  then,  as  it  were,  reading  about  a  person's 
experiences,  with  the  privilege  at  any  moment 
of  looking  up  to  see  that  person's  face. 

JONES. — That  is  true;  but  our  question  is, 
how  do  the  classics  themselves  help  us  ? 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  195 

ROBINSON.  —  The  answer  lies  in  one  little  word, 
art.  The  classics,  more  than  any  modern  litera 
ture,  teach  us  art,  and  art  is  the  conscious  purpose 
of  man  to  make  this  world  more  beautiful. 
Philip  Sidney  says  that  the  object  of  poetry  is  to 
make  this  too-much-loved  world  more  lovely;  I 
should  extend  his  definition  a  little  further  and 
say  that  the  object  of  art  is  to  make  this  world 
more  lovely,  more  lovable,  and  more  loved. 

Modern  literature,  compared  with  ancient 
literature,  is  careless,  slipshod,  not  wholly  grown 
up  ;  it  has  little  sense  of  responsibility.  The  chief 
duty  it  sets  before  itself  is  to  hold  the  mirror  up 
to  nature  and  reflect  the  unintelligible  happenings 
of  life,  in  all  their  confusion,  their  inconsistency, 
their  inanity.  Ancient  literature  was  dominated 
by  a  very  different  purpose,  it  had  a  profound 
sentiment  of  high  duty.  The  creation,  so  it 
seemed  to  the  ancients,  had  been  left  incomplete, 
and  man,  as  the  creature  most  divine,  was  charged 
with  the  labor  of  carrying  on  the  uncompleted  task. 
With  bold  hearts  the  Greeks  set  to  work  to  piece 
out  the  incompleteness  with  literature,  especially 
with  poetry,  to  make  up  for  the  neglect  of  the  gods 
by  human  achievement.  I  look  on  those  ancient 
Greeks  and  Romans  as  I  do  on  workmen  who  fill 
in  the  marshy  shallows  of  our  river  fronts,  put 


196  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

earth  upon  the  spongy  ooze,  sow  grass,  set  out 
trees,  plant  flowers,  and  create  a  garden  where 
before  was  merely  mud  and  slime. 

BROWN.  —  Life,  as  Wordsworth  said,  and  I  am 
glad  to  see  that  Robinson  supports  him,  requires 
an  art,  and  of  all  the  arts  the  art  of  living  is  the 
most  useful,  the  most  admirable.  All  conscious  art 
is  an  attempt  to  transfer  emotion  or  thought  from 
him  who  feels  or  thinks  it  to  other  human  beings. 
Art  is  the  necessary  consequence  of  human  sym 
pathy.  Men  are  not  happy  in  isolation ;  they 
undergo  the  experience  of  emotion,  of  thought, 
and  they  are  impelled  to  impart  this  wonderful 
experience  to  others.  Some  men  make  use  of 
marble  or  bronze,  some  of  pencil  and  paint,  some 
of  written  signs.  But  more  primitive,  more 
fundamental,  incomparably  more  wide  reaching, 
as  means  to  impart  emotion  and  thought,  are 
manners  and  speech.  I  hardly  know  which  of 
the  two  is  more  important.  By  manners  I  mean 
the  bearing  of  the  body,  in  every  part,  from  head 
to  foot,  the  whole  outward  man.  Our  human 
instinct,  the  inner  impulse,  the  will  to  live,  insists, 
for  one  purpose  or  another,  upon  our  imparting 
emotion  and  thought ;  to  do  so  well  requires  art, 
to  do  so  excellently  is  a  fine  art.  To  pass  on 
emotion  and  thought  unimpaired  in  their  first 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  197 

vigor,  in  their  first  freshness,  adds  the  life  of  each 
to  the  lives  of  all;  it  increases,  intensifies,  and 
expands  all  life.  Feelings,  thoughts,  are  seeds, 
shaken  from  the  parent  stalk,  that  lodge  and  fruc 
tify  in  new  soil.  Each  feeling,  each  thought, 
should  pass  on  as  free  as  light  from  mind  to  mind. 
This  art  —  the  human  art  I  may  call  it  —  lies  in 
the  choice  of  words,  in  putting  them  in  sequence, 
in  laying  stress,  in  what  Petrarch  calls  il  bel  tacere, 
the  art  of  silence,  and  in  holding  and  moving 
the  body,  —  eyes,  lips,  arms,  hands  —  so  that 
mind  shall  communicate  with  mind,  free  from 
obscurity  or  blur,  as  through  an  open  window. 

Art  is  all  one.  We  talk  of  the  fine  arts ;  but 
that  is  an  arbitrary  distinction.  Our  abilities 
and  our  time  are  limited,  and  naturally  we  give 
ourselves  up  to  that  form  of  art  which  seems  most 
suited  to  our  purposes ;  but  one  thing  we  are  all 
bound  to  do,  and  that  is  to  remain  stanchly 
loyal  to  all  art.  The  Greeks  were  the  supreme 
artists,  and  we  must  go  to  them  as  to  the  fountain  : 
head  of  the  waters  which  alone  can  quench  the 
human  thirst  for  human  sympathy.  They  teach 
us  how  best  to  live.  By  studying  delicacy, 
beauty,  power,  clarity,  in  their  written  speech, 
we  learn  how  much  those  qualities  add  to  the 
fulness  of  life,  and  we  take  away  a  humble  desire 


198  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

to  do  our  best  to  render  our  own  lives,  and  the 
lives  of  our  friends,  fuller,  more  complete,  more  in 
accord  with  the  possibilities  of  life. 

ROBINSON.  —  Yes.  As  Brown  was  saying,  the 
special  qualities,  sobriety,  self-control,  repose, 
which  tradition  assigns  to  the  classics,  although 
not  true  of  Greek  or  Latin  feelings,  are  in  great 
measure  true  of  the  form  in  which  those  feelings 
are  expressed  in  Greek  and  Latin  literature. 
Tradition  is  wrong  to  attribute  those  utterly 
non-southern  qualities  to  living  Greeks  and 
Romans,  but  it  is  right  to  recognize  that  they  are 
the  chief  qualities  in  classical  form.  Form  is  the 
legacy  of  antiquity  to  us.  Life  is  movement,  it 
does  not  concern  itself  with  form.  Life  at  its 
best,  at  its  highest,  is  passion.  Passion  is  the  one 
sacred  quality  that  exists,  so  far  as  man  can  see, 
in  the  universe.  The  chief  duty  of  art  is  to  per 
petuate  passion  by  putting  it  in  such  form  that  all 
who  behold  shall  be  quickened  and  take  away 
more  life  and  fuller.  The  ancients  learned  that 
the  only  way  to  represent  passion  is  through  re 
straint  ;  that  sobriety  and  measure  offer  the  least 
imperfect  means  to  depict  life  in  its  intensity. 

That  is  the  lesson  of  art  for  the  theatre,  as 
Hamlet  knew  before  me.  That  is  the  lesson  that 
Brown  clamors  for,  the  lesson  of  conduct.  To 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  199 

learn  it  we  must  go  to  school  to  the  classics.  If 
the  Loeb  Classical  Library  helps  us  to  comprehend 
the  immense  significance  of  restraint  in  the  delinea 
tion  of  life,  it  has  achieved  a  great  thing. 

JONES.  —  I  have  much  in  common  with  both 
of  you,  but,  probably  because  I  am  a  clergyman, 
my  point  of  view  is  a  little  different.  I  advocate 
the  classics  because  they  constitute  a  retreat,  in 
which  the  spirit  may  commune  with  the  high 
thoughts  of  the  past.  Modern  literature  is 
modern ;  it  concerns  itself  with  actual  life,  with 
our  distractions,  our  trivialities,  our  romance, 
our  getting  on  in  the  world,  with  all  our  coarser 
appetites ;  but  in  the  remote  classics,  in  that  cool, 
tranquil,  distant  world,  we  can  surrender  our 
selves  to  contemplation,  to  meditation,  to  the  high 
influences  that  always  stoop  to  the  soul's  call. 

This  remoteness  of  the  classics  affects  me  as  my 
remembrance  of  gracious  figures  in  my  childhood. 
The  people  there  seem  to  have  a  nobler  aspect, 
a  more  goodly  presence,  larger  sympathies,  a 
wiser  and  a  kinder  attitude.  We  do  not  apply 
the  lessons  we  learned  from  them  directly  to  life, 
but  we  know  that  somehow  the  most  valuable 
lessons  in  our  lives  came  from  them ;  we  cannot 
say  just  what  we  learned,  but  we  possess  a  memory 
of  quietness,  of  ripeness,  of  wisdom,  of  qualities 


200  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

that  lie  near  the  centre  of  life,  and  we  feel  that  to 
them  is  due  whatever  gain  we  have  made  in  grace 
and  moral  stature.  Greek  literature  has  a  like 
effect  upon  us. 

We  need,  profoundly,  times  of  seclusion,  of 
withdrawal  from  the  outer  world,  from  the  domi 
nation  of  the  senses ;  we  need  to  escape  from  the 
current  notion  that  life  lies  in  motion,  in  rush,  in 
physical  activity.  We  need  a  contradictory  force, 
an  opposing  experience.  We  can  no  longer  betake 
ourselves  to  a  Carthusian  monastery  or  a  Benedic 
tine  abbey :  the  East  is  too  strange,  too  little 
akin  to  us ;  but  the  classics  of  Greece  and  Rome 
offer  us  a  retreat,  a  refuge  for  the  tired  spirit,  a 
home  for  the  unquiet  mind.  I,  for  one,  long  to 
put  on  from  time  to  time  cowl,  cord,  and  sandals, 
and  dwell  in  the  sequestered  and  cloistered  classics, 
far  from  the  senseless  noises  of  the  world. 

As  to  art,  I  agree  that  the  classics  teach  it,  that 
we  need  it,  that  self-expression  is  or  should  be  an 
art ;  and  for  me  the  function  of  this  art  of  self- 
expression  is  to  reveal  the  more  delicate,  the  more 
subtle,  the  more  spiritual  elements  of  the  soul. 
Many  people,  I  believe,  possess  fine  qualities,  but 
because  of  inability  to  master  their  medium  of 
expression,  whether  act,  word  or  silence,  those 
qualities,  as  Shakspere  says,  "die  to  them- 


THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN  2OI 

selves."  To  preserve  these  tender  blossoms  of  the 
soul,  and  to  transmit  their  sweetness,  is  one  of  the 
problems  of  religion,  a  problem  that  needs  the 
help  of  art.  Without  great  art,  conscious  or 
unconscious,  the  self-revelation  of  all  great  spiritual 
souls  would  have  been  impossible.  David,  if  the 
psalms  are  his,  St.  Augustine,  Thomas  a  Kempis, 
John  Bunyan,  Jonathan  Edwards,  are  great  artists. 
More  than  all  other  people  the  Greeks  possessed 
the  art  of  portraying  the  finer  qualities  of  the  soul, 
as  well  as  the  "deep  and  dazzling  darkness "  that 
encompasses  humanity. 

ROBINSON.  —  The  business  of  art  —  I  merely 
add  this  in  order  to  define  my  own  position  — 
is  not  merely  to  quicken  all  life,  to  heighten  its 
pulse,  by  means  of  a  fuller  and  freer  intercom 
munication  of  thought  and  feeling.  Art  must 
always  be  up  and  at  work,  refashioning  the  things 
of  the  earth  for  the  good  of  man.  Architecture 
can  make  a  city  beautiful,  sculpture  and  painting 
can  add  their  loveliness ;  but  those  arts  merely 
concern  things  material.  Literature  has  a  greater 
duty.  Literature  must  take  the  stuff  that  human 
experience  is  made  of,  work  upon  it,  and  convert 
it  into  nobler,  more  beautiful,  more  stimulating 
shapes.  Literature  must  tear  away  the  curtain 
of  familiarity  that  hides  the  beauty  in  common 


202  THE  CLASSICS  AGAIN 

things.  Or,  as  Parson  Jones  would  put  it,  litera 
ture  is  the  angel,  the  aeon,  the  demiurge,  that 
redeems  this  gross  life  and  helps  wipe  out  its 
shame.  Would  you  rather  see  the  England  in 
which  the  men  Shakspere,  Chaucer,  Words 
worth  actually  lived,  or  that  England  as  they,  as 
poets,  have  pictured  it  ?  Would  you  rather  have 
lived  in  France  under  Louis  Philippe,  in  Russia 
under  Alexander  II,  or  as  Balzac  and  Tolstoi 
described  the  one  and  the  other  ?  I  find  all  life 
chaotic  until  it  has  passed  through  the  mind  of  an 
artist. 

JONES.  —  Robinson  grows  lyrical.  That  means 
that  it  is  very  late,  and  time  to  go  to  bed.  Good 
night,  Brown. 

ROBINSON.  —  Who  cares  for  what  the  isles  of 
Greece  were  to  the  common  men  who  lived  in 
them  ?  But  the  realms  of  gold,  which  ^Eschylus, 
Sappho,  Theocritus  created,  are  still  the  home  of 
beauty. 

JONES.  —  Come  on,  Robinson.  You  are  a 
literary  Niobe,  all  words. 

BROWN.  —  Good  night.     Come  again. 

ROBINSON.  —  Good  night.  My  last  word  is 
Greece. 


LITERATURE    AND    COSMOPOLITANISM 

I 

READERS  of  literature  who  entertain  a  fond  belief 
that  literature  emancipates  the  human  spirit, 
especially  those  who  read  European  books  in  the 
belief  that  they  are  opening  their  souls  as  well  as 
their  minds,  and  that  by  training  themselves 
upon  things  cosmopolitan  they  are  shaking  off 
the  narrow  bonds  of  national  prejudice,  have 
suffered  a  cruel  shock.  In  this  bloody  upheaval 
of  Europe,  where  all  men  are  in  dire  need  of  tem 
perance,  serenity,  and  an  emancipated  spirit,  the 
leaders  of  European  literature  are  swept  off  their 
feet  by  the  flood  of  national  passion,  just  as 
madly  as  statesmen,  news-vendors,  fishmongers, 
merchants,  and  all  who  constitute  the  national 
mob.  Is  the  "Republic  of  Letters"  as  much  the 
home  of  fanaticism,  of  the  negation  of  reason,  of 
mad  self-love,  as  a  military  barrack  ?  Is  there 
no  medicine  in  literature  to  heal  the  mind  sick 
with  national  egotism  ?  Or  are  the  present  chiefs 
of  European  letters  —  Hauptmann,  Maeterlinck, 
203 


204      LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM 

and  the  rest  —  not    worthy    of   the    respect    in 
which  the  world  has  held  them  ? 

The  "Republic  of  Letters"  is  an  idea  so  covered 
with  lichens  of  respectability  that  it  has  become 
an  object  of  vague  homage,  and  is  commonly  be 
lieved  to  possess  wonder-working  properties.  To 
it  has  been  assigned  not  merely  the  large  and 
serene  duty  of  instilling  respect  for  letters  in  all 
those  who  waste  their  powers  in  getting  and 
spending,  but  also  that  of  spreading  democracy, 
of  substituting  peace  for  war,  of  playing  a  part  at 
least  as  great  as  that  hoped  for  from  Christianity. 
The  "Republic  of  Letters"  is  to  break  down  the 
barriers  between  nations,  pull  up  ancient  land 
marks,  and  establish  a  human  patria.  Several 
considerations  have  aided  this  notion.  In  the 
Renaissance,  at  which  school  our  modern  world 
acquired  the  complexion  of  its  thought,  all  that 
was  then  acknowledged  as  literature  —  the  classics 
of  Greece  and  Rome  —  was  termed  the  humani 
ties;  and  Terence's  apothegm,  homo  sum,  hu- 
mani  nil  a  me  alienum  puto,  was  weighted  with 
new  solidity.  In  this  realm  of  the  spirit  every 
human  being  could  find  a  home.  The  power  of 
the  humanities  seemed  herculean ;  as  soon  as  the 
things  of  the  mind  were  recognized  to  be  the 
real  things  of  life,  political  boundaries,  national 


LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM      205 

jealousies,  race-prejudices,  would  vanish  of  them 
selves,  and  the  problem  of  inhumanity  be  solved. 
This  idea  we  have  inherited. 

Besides  this,  in  the  "Republic  of  Letters"  a 
succession  of  men  have  risen  to  the  office  of  su 
preme  authority,  not  by  right  of  heredity,  not  as 
representing  God  on  earth,  not  at  the  will  of 
a  Pretorian  Guard  or  a  military  caste,  but  by 
the  universal  suffrage  of  enfranchised  minds  in 
all  Europe.  Plato,  Cicero,  Petrarch,  Voltaire, 
Goethe,  are  recognized  as  belonging  to  the 
whole  world ;  their  great  names  knit  up  the 
ravelled  sleave  of  national  divisions  and  bind  all 
peoples  into  one.  Their  influence  spreads  far 
beyond  the  boundaries  of  their  native  states,  and 
unites  men  from  east,  west,  north,  and  south,  in 
common  discipleship. 

Added  to  these  grounds  of  hope  that  literature 
would  arouse  in  men  a  recognition  of  their  com 
mon  brotherhood,  is  the  part  played  in  the  crea 
tion  of  literature  by  curiosity.  At  bottom  natural 
man  is  pure  yokel,  suspicious  of  men  from  another 
village,  afraid  of  travellers  from  afar ;  he  builds  a 
wall  to  keep  the  alien  world  away.  Nevertheless, 
curiosity,  the  Ariel  of  the  intellect,  peers  over  the 
wall  into  what  tradition  asserts  is  the  Cimmerian 
darkness  beyond,  and  perceives  something  stirring. 


206     LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM 

After  all,  the  people  within  the  walls  are  not  the 
only  creatures  that  walk  erect.  Curiosity  climbs 
over  the  wall  and  ventures  to  reconnoitre;  it 
wanders  on  further  and  further,  making  discovery 
after  discovery. 

Literature  is  the  noblest  product  of  curiosity; 
we  are  curious  to  learn  things  outside  ourselves. 
We  wish  to  know  the  great  deeds  of  our  ancestors, 
how  they  fought  the  Trojans  on  the  windy  plains 
of  Ilium;  we  wish  to  know  about  the  covenant 
made  by  our  fathers  with  their  God,  how  they 
came  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  and  were  led 
across  the  desert  into  the  land  of  Canaan.  We 
are  eager  to  become  acquainted  with  the  ways  and 
doings  of  our  less  immediate  neighbors,  —  Becky 
Sharp,  Pere  Goriot,  Anna  Karenina,  Dorothea 
Casaubon,  Hester  Prynne. 

This  tendency  to  inquire  concerning  things 
beyond  our  village,  beyond  our  province,  operates 
also  concerning  things  beyond  our  national 
boundaries.  We  are  as  inquisitive  about  life  in 
London,  Paris,  or  Rome,  as  about  life  in  Boston 
or  New  York.  We  wish  to  learn  foreign  manners 
and  customs,  foreign  ideas  concerning  all  the  mul 
titudinous  manifestations  of  life.  We  are  as 
eager  concerning  things  cosmopolitan  as  concern 
ing  things  domestic,  and  we  demand  that  litera- 


LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM      207 

ture  shall  tell  us  all  about  them.  Curiosity  in 
literature  seems  to  take  the  direct  road  toward  an 
international  commonwealth. 

Such  facts  as  these  have  encouraged  pacific 
men  to  a  belief  that  literature  might  establish  a 
cosmopolitanism  which  should  make  all  men 
brothers,  and  do  what  Christianity  and  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  have  failed  to  accom 
plish.  And  here  and  there,  in  rare  instances,  the 
idea  of  a  world  so  concerned  with  matters  of  the 
mind  that  national  discords  fall  like  withered 
husks  from  the  ripe  fruit  of  the  spirit,  rises  in 
majesty  before  some  high  and  sensitive  soul. 

In  the  year  1870,  by  the  eighth  day  of  Decem 
ber,  the  Prussians  had  long  been  laying  siege  to 
the  city  of  Paris.  They  had  advanced  from  vic 
tory  to  victory :  the  Emperor  of  the  French  had 
surrendered  at  Sedan,  Marshal  Bazaine  had  sur 
rendered  at  Metz.  On  that  day,  in  the  College 
de  France,  Gaston  Paris,  the  famous  teacher  of 
mediaeval  literature,  began  his  winter's  course 
with  a  lecture  on  the  Chanson  de  Roland. 

He  said,  "I  did  not  expect  that  I  should  reopen 
my  course  in  the  midst  of  this  circle  of  steel  that 
the  German  armies  make  round  about  us.  Since 
I  bade  good-bye,  in  the  month  of  June,  to  my 
kind  audience,  what  strange  things  have  happened  ! 


208      LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM 

Of  those  auditors  who  had  already  become  for  me 
almost  friends,  very  few  doubtless  are  here  again 
to-day  in  this  hall.  Some  are  taking  part  in  the 
defence  of  the  city ;  others,  unable  to  take  a  hand 
therein,  have  gone  to  seek  a  little  peace  in  foreign 
lands ;  others,  too,  I  cannot  forget,  are  no  doubt 
in  the  very  camp  of  the  invaders." 

Then  he  went  on  to  say,  — 

"I  do  not  think,  in  general,  that  patriotism  has 
anything  to  do  with  science.  The  chairs  of  higher 
learning  are  in  no  degree  political  platforms ;  they 
are  wrested  from  their  true  purpose  if  made  to 
serve,  whether  in  defence  or  in  attack,  any  end 
whatever  outside  of  their  spiritual  goal. 

"I  profess  absolutely  and  without  reserve  this 
doctrine,  that  learning  has  no  other  object  than 
truth,  and  truth  for  itself,  without  any  heed  of 
consequences,  good  or  bad,  sorrowful  or  happy, 
that  truth  may  cause  in  practice.  He  who  from 
any  motive,  patriotic,  religious,  or  even  ethical, 
allows  himself,  in  the  facts  which  he  studies  or  in 
the  conclusion  which  he  draws,  the  smallest  dis 
simulation,  the  very  slightest  alteration,  is  not 
worthy  to  have  his  place  in  the  great  laboratory 
where  probity,  as  a  title  to  admission,  is  more  indis 
pensable  than  ability. 

"So  understood,  studies  in  common,  pursued 


LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM      209 

in  the  same  spirit  in  all  civilized  countries,  form 
above  nationalities  —  which  are  limited,  diverse, 
and  too  often  enemies  —  a  great  patrie  which  no 
war  soils,  no  conqueror  menaces,  and  where  souls 
find  refuge  and  that  union  given  them  in  ancient 
times  by  'The  City  of  God.'" 

Nevertheless,  this  noble  conception  of  a  coun 
try  beyond  the  greeds,  the  vulgar  ambitions,  the 
baser  passions  of  man,  does  not  point  to  a  "Re 
public  of  Letters,"  but  to  a  "  Republic  of  Science." 
Science  is  the  same  for  all  men :  the  properties  of 
numbers,  the  deductions  of  astronomers,  the 
analyses  of  chemists  remain  the  same  whether  the 
experiments  are  performed  in  Petrograd,  Paris, 
or  New  York.  Stars,  rocks,  radium,  fossils,  speak 
the  same  language  to  Swede  and  Spaniard,  to 
Welshman  and  Serb.  The  sciences  have  one 
common  mode  of  expression  throughout  the 
world ;  that  mode  is  experiment.  Sir  Oliver 
Lodge,  Ehrlich,  Metchnikoff,  Carrell,  Flexner, 
Madame  Curie,  are  all  fellow  laborers,  —  like  so 
many  carpenters,  masons,  and  bricklayers,  — 
busily  at  work  upon  the  edifice  of  experimental 
truth.  Their  great  tower  ascends  toward  heaven  ; 
and  it  will  mount  higher  and  higher,  for  no  jealous 
god  has  cast  upon  the  workmen  the  confusion  of 
tongues. 


210     LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM 

Science  has  but  one  language,  whereas  thought 
which  finds  expression  in  literature  is  quite  an 
other  matter.  If  literature  embodied  itself  in 
some  non-national  medium,  as  numbers  or  musical 
notes,  the  whole  weight  of  its  influence  would  be 
in  favor  of  brotherhood  and  unity.  But,  since 
the  failure  of  Latin  to  maintain  itself  as  a  living 
language,  literature  has  been  dependent  upon  a 
medium  which  is  the  earliest  and  purest  product 
of  the  national  spirit,  —  language.  Language  is 
a  steadfast  assertion  of  national  characteristics, 
national  limitations,  and  national  boundaries. 

II 

The  spirit  of  literature  finds  its  home  in  its 
native  place.  Literature  must  strike  its  roots 
into  its  native  earth,  and  spread  its  branches  to  its 
native  sunshine  and  its  native  breezes,  or  it  will 
die.  Literature  is  passionately  patriotic;  for  it 
lives  only  in  its  native  speech.  Translate  litera 
ture  into  another  language,  and  instead  of  the 
living  tree,  its  head  lifted  toward  heaven,  its 
branches  spread  wide  over  its  native  soil,  you 
have  cords  of  wood  piled  up  in  the  market-place. 

The  great  dictators  of  letters  have  dominated 
Europe  through  the  power  of  national  language, 
just  as  Caesar  spread  his  conquests  by  means  of 


LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM      211 

Roman  legions.  Plato  is  universal  because  in  a 
language  unrivalled  in  its  blending  of  intellectual 
and  sensuous  qualities  he  embodied  the  Greek 
spirit ;  in  the  English  of  Jowett  he  is  something 
quite  other  than  himself.  Cicero,  by  a  Roman 
military  splendor  of  rhetoric,  by  masterful  control 
of  the  stately  phrases  of  Latin,  filled  the  world 
with  his  reputation.  Petrarch,  indeed,  succeeded 
to  the  first  place  in  European  letters,  because  of 
his  lordship  in  every  department  of  Latin  litera 
ture,  while  Latin  was  still  the  universal  language; 
but  within  a  hundred  years,  all  those  grounds  for 
his  fame  were  forgotten,  and  he  has  since  re 
mained  enthroned  because  he  is  the  greatest  mas 
ter  of  delicate  expression  in  the  Italian  tongue. 

Voltaire's  renown  throughout  Europe  was  due 
to  his  happy  power  of  embodying  the  essence  of 
the  Gallic  genius  in  French  prose.  Goethe,  the 
great  apostle  of  cosmopolitanism,  whose  ideal  was 
to  lift  his  head  above  the  clouds  and  fog  of 
national  discords,  will  surely,  in  the  end,  depend 
for  his  glory  upon  his  lyrical  poems,  for  in  them 
he  made  exquisite  use  of  what  is  best  in  the  Ger 
man  heart  and  the  German  language. 

The  only  name  which  absolutely  transcends 
national  boundaries  is  that  of  Shakspere;  but 
who  can  say  that  even  his  delineation  of  the  hu- 


212     LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM 

man    soul   in   Hamlet,   Othello,   Lear,   Cordelia, 
Imogen,   Shylock,   could  have  won   such  world 
wide  admiration,  had  it  not  been  for  his  royal 
power  over  Elizabethan  English  ? 
Read  him  at  random : 

There  is  a  willow  grows  aslant  a  brook, 

That  shows  his  hoar  leaves  in  the  glassy  stream; 

There,  on  the  pendent  boughs  her  coronet  weeds 
Clambering  to  hang,  an  envious  sliver  broke; 
When  down  her  weedy  trophies  and  herself 
Fell  in  the  weeping  brook. 

Is  it  not  this  Shaksperian  English  that  constitutes 
the  wings  of  Shakspere's  genius  ? 

As  all  lovers  of  beauty  were  wont  to  make  a 
pilgrimage  to  Rheims  because  the  cathedral  there 
was  saturated  with  French  genius;  as  we  go  to 
Florence  because  the  Palazzo  Fecchio,  Giotto's 
campanile,  and  the  pictured  riches  of  the  Uffizi, 
are  profoundly  Italian;  as  we  visit  the  yew- 
shaded,  tender-turfed,  mellowed  and  memorial- 
laden  village  churches  of  England,  because  they 
breathe  forth  the  very  breath  of  England ;  so  do 
we  betake  ourselves  to  the  great  national  classics 
of  literature. 

The  genius  of  a  nation  is  the  source  of  untold 
riches ;  it  has  been  bred  by  centuries,  dandled  by 


LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM      213 

favoring  circumstances,  nurtured  and  tutored  by 
a  thousand  random  influences ;  it  has  taken  to 
itself  a  multitude  of  discordant  elements,  trans 
formed  them  into  a  homogeneous  whole,  and 
stamped  that  whole  with  the  national  effigy  and 
superscription. 

Language  is  the  most  perfect  expression  of  a 
nation's  genius;  it  serves  the  nation's  greatest 
needs;  it  has  had  the  greatest  labor  bestowed 
upon  it.  Generation  after  generation  has 
struggled  to  express  in  language  its  tenderest 
love,  its  profoundest  passion,  its  bitterest  grief, 
its  most  subtle  thought.  One  man  added  a  word 
here,  another  a  phrase  there ;  this  man,  as  with  a 
hammer,  beat  rough  speech  into  smoothness 
and  delicacy,  a  second  rendered  it  pliable,  a  third 
fitted  it  for  speculation.  Mothers  wrought  it  into 
a  means  of  comforting  their  babies;  lovers 
fashioned  it  into  fantastic  rhetoric  of  compliment ; 
thinkers  moulded  it  into  a  substance  so  light 
that  it  is  hardly  heavier  than  thought. 

Finally,  after  a  people  has  labored  for  centuries 
to  create  a  national  instrument,  literature  picks 
up  that  instrument  and  puts  it  to  her  uses.  What 
literature  shall  do  is  determined  by  that  instru 
ment  ;  she  has  no  choice,  she  is  the  creature  of  her 
tool,  she  is  the  handiwork  of  language. 


214     LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM 

There  was  a  time,  hundreds  of  years  ago,  when 
cosmopolitanism  dominated  literature.  The 
Latin  language  was  but  the  spirit  of  the  Roman 
Empire  reincarnate  in  literature;  the  universal 
domination  of  one  great  people  lived  on  in  ghostly 
fashion.  Even  after  national  languages  had  long 
proved  themselves  amply  sufficient  for  all  the  pur 
poses  of  literature,  brilliant  spirits  of  the  Re 
naissance  —  Ficino,  Poliziano,  Erasmus,  —  even 
Spinoza  and  Leibnitz,  wrote  in  Latin ;  they  wished 
to  overstep  national  boundaries  and  write  to  all 
the  world  as  fellow  cosmopolites.  And  because 
they  wrote  in  Latin,  and  not  in  their  native  lan 
guages,  what  they  wrote  belongs  to  the  domain  of 
thought,  not  to  the  domain  of  literature.  Learning 
and  the  Church  strove  in  vain  to  maintain  Latin 
as  a  living  language;  it  died  just  because  it  was 
cosmopolitan  and  in  no  wise  national.  Every 
where  the  power  that  carries  literary  fame  through 
out  the  world  must  be  sought  in  some  national 
trait. 

We  must  not  be  disappointed  to  find  that  in 
this  tumult  of  national  passion  these  European 
men  of  letters  became  primitive,  elemental, 
blinded  by  national  egotism.  Men  of  science, 
whose  home  is  the  laboratory,  who  talk  in  electrons 
and  terms  of  energy;  philosophers,  who  spend 


LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM      215 

their  time  in  speculation  concerning  truth ;  states 
men,  who  know  that  under  the  promptings  of  greed 
all  nations  behave  like  savages,  —  these  have  no 
excuse  for  losing  their  moral  equilibrium  :  physical 
truth,  philosophical  truth,  human  nature,  will  not 
be  changed  by  the  outcome  of  this  war.  But  it 
may  not  be  so  with  literature.  These  men  of 
letters  are  instinctively  right:  literature,  the 
food  of  their  souls,  depends  upon  national  spirit. 
Literature  would  droop,  decay,  and  become  of  no 
more  moral  comfort  to  men  than  mathematics,  if 
it  were  to  become  cosmopolitan,  or  indifferent 
to  national  existence. 

Ill 

Does  literature  then  do  nothing  to  soften  men's 
manners,  to  lift  them  to  a  large  view  of  things,  to 
enable  them  to  surmount  the  Chinese  wall  of 
ignorance  and  prejudice  which  encircles  every 
nation,  to  crush  in  their  hearts  the  brutal  and 
irrational  war-spirit,  to  help  bring  about  the  long- 
dreamed-of  golden  age  of  peace  and  good-will 
among  men  ?  The  answer  is  that,  of  course, 
literature  helps  men  in  all  these  ways;  but  not 
by  uprooting  the  instincts  of  patriotism. 

Cicero's  eulogy  of  the  benefits  conferred  by 
literature  is  as  true  to-day  as  on  the  day  when  he 


2l6      LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM 

defended  Aulus  Licinius  Archias  in  the  Roman 
forum.  " Haec  studio,  adulescentiam  alunt,  senec- 
tutem  oblectant,  secundas  res  ornant,  adversis  per- 
fugium  ac  solatium  praebent,  delectant  domi,  non 
impediunt  foris,  pernoctant  nobiscum,  peregrinan- 
tur,  rusticantur"  (These  studies  nourish  youth, 
they  delight  old  age,  they  add  a  grace  to  pros 
perity,  they  offer  refuge  and  comfort  in  adversity, 
they  are  a  pleasure  at  home,  they  are  no  trouble 
abroad,  they  will  pass  the  night  with  us,  accom 
pany  us  on  our  travels,  and  stay  with  us  in  the 
country.) 

All  this  is  true.  The  benefits  of  literature  can 
hardly  be  overestimated.  Books  enlarge  a  man's 
horizon.  They  raise  a  mirage  of  water-brooks 
and  date-palms  to  travellers  in  a  desert.  They 
are  "the  sick  man's  health,  the  prisoner's  release." 
Shut  within  a  narrow  routine  of  dull  necessity, 
sad  at  heart  in  a  world  where  wrong  triumphs, 
where  beauty  has  no  assurance  of  respect,  where 
humanity  toils  terribly  merely  for  its  daily  bread 
or  the  satisfaction  of  trivial  appetites,  the  earthly 
pilgrim  need  do  no  more  than  pick  up  a  book, 
and  lo  !  he  steps  forth  into  another  world.  Here 
he  is  free  from  sorrow  and  care,  free  from  the 
burden  of  his  body,  from  envy,  jealousy,  con 
tempt,  self-satisfaction,  from  vain  regrets,  from 


LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM      217 

wishes  that  can  never  wear  the  livery  of  hope, 
from  narrowness  of  soul  and  hardness  of  heart. 
He  may  mingle  in  the  society  of  the  good  and 
great;  he  may  listen  to  the  wise  man  and  the 
prophet ;  he  may  see  all  the  conditions  of  human 
happiness  and  misery;  he  may  watch  the  human 
spirit,  in  its  strife  with  circumstance,  nobly  con 
quer  or  basely  succumb ;  he  may  go  down  through 
the  "gate  of  a  hundred  sorrows/'  or  accompany 
Dante  and  Beatrice  through  the  spheres  of  Para 
dise. 

By  means  of  literature  we  step  from  our  nar 
row  chamber  into  a  brave  world  of  unnumbered 
interests.  After  such  experiences  the  reader 
acquires  a  larger  view  of  life;  in  his  heart  he 
crushes  the  irrational  and  brutal  war-spirit;  he 
imagines  for  a  season  that  men  are  brothers. 
And  if  this  is  true  of  readers  who  can  leave  their 
daily  routine  for  the  palace  of  literature  but  now 
and  then,  for  an  hour  or  two  of  an  evening  or  on 
Sunday,  it  is  far  more  true  of  the  men  who  pass 
their  lives  in  the  palace  and  have  contributed  to 
its  wonderful  appurtenances. 

The  humanities  do  render  men  more  humane; 
literature  does  fit  them  to  be  citizens  of  the  world, 
without  depriving  them  of  their  own  homes.  Die 
versunkene  Glocke,  UOiseau  bleu.  Plays  Pleasant 


21 8      LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM 

and  Unpleasant,  Peter  Pan,  Jean  Christophe,  all 
seem  to  be  proofs  of  a  broad  and  sensitive  hu 
manity. 

But  certainly  Hauptmann,  Maeterlinck,  and 
their  companions,  swept  away  by  national  feel 
ing,  have  given  our  world  a  shock.  It  is  a  natural 
disappointment;  we  had  hoped  that  literature 
was  an  effective  instrument  of  peace,  and  it 
comes  with  a  sword.  We  are  disappointed,  not 
by  what  they  have  done,  but  by  what  they,  or 
some  among  them,  have  left  undone.  Men  whose 
country  is  threatened  with  destruction  are  right 
to  cry  out  and  fight  for  the  preservation  of  their 
country,  and  men  of  letters  more  than  others,  for 
literature  has  rendered  their  own  country  still 
dearer  to  them  than  it  is  to  other  men.  So  far 
as  their  passion  limits  itself  to  the  preservation 
of  their  own  country,  all  the  world  will  applaud 
them ;  if  they  overstep  that  limit  and  support,  or 
justify,  any  attempt  to  destroy  another  nation,  or 
if  they  remain  silent  during  any  such  attempt,  no 
matter  who  makes  it,  they  are  false  to  literature, 
as  well  as  to  civilization  and  to  the  nobler  spirit 
of  man.  All  these  distinguished  European  men 
of  letters  proclaim  the  sacred  rights  of  their  own 
nationality :  but  if  one  nation  has  a  sacred  right 
to  exist,  all  nations  have;  and  the  infringement 


LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM      219 

of  a  sacred  right  is  a  sacrilegious  wrong.  That 
wrong  is  committed  by  any  man  of  letters  who 
does  not  raise  his  voice  and  hand  to  prevent  one 
nation  from  crushing  another.  There  is  an 
allegiance  owed  to  literature. 

The  world's  literature  depends  for  its  richness 
upon  diversity ;  and  difference  of  nationality 
creates  the  most  interesting  diversity.  Life  and 
its  phenomena  do  not  appear  the  same  to  a 
Russian  and  a  Belgian.  Crush  Russia,  and  you 
maim  or  bruise  her  national  life,  and  with  her 
national  life  her  power  of  utterance,  —  you 
crush  in  the  egg  Tolstois  and  Dostoievskis  still 
unborn.  Destroy  Belgium,  and  you  deprive  the 
world's  literature  of  all  that  which  new  Maeter- 
lincks  would  create.  No  nation  can  be  maimed, 
without  suffering  in  soul  as  well  as  in  body.  The 
full  functioning  of  national  life  is  necessary  to  a 
fine  flowering  of  literature.  Athens  produced 
^Eschylus,  Euripides,  Sophocles,  in  the  time  of 
her  glory;  England  bred  Shakspere,  Spenser, 
Hooker,  Bacon,  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth ; 
Corneille,  Racine,  Moliere,  La  Fontaine,  flourished 
in  the  golden  days  of  Louis  XIV.  Lower  a 
nation's  vitality,  and  her  spirit  becomes  languid ; 
she  no  longer  possesses  the  living  energy  to  pro 
duce  what  she  might  otherwise  have  done. 


220     LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM 

When  a  nation  is  sick,  the  noblest  parts  of  her 
suffer  first. 

A  cowed  nation  cannot  bring  forth  a  noble 
literature.  But  a  little  state  may  have  as  great 
a  soul  as  a  mighty  state;  witness  the  Athens  of 
Pericles,  the  Florence  of  Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  or 
Holland  in  its  great  days.  No  man  of  letters, 
unless  blinded  by  ignoble  passion,  would  consent 
to  the  national  destruction  of  any  state.  The 
rule  laid  down  by  Immanuel  Kant  for  the  foun 
dation  of  perpetual  peace  applies  with  double 
force  to  the  lasting  prosperity  of  literature  :  "  No 
independent  State  (little  or  great  is  in  this  case 
all  one)  shall  be  capable  of  becoming  the  property 
of  another  State  by  inheritance,  exchange,  pur 
chase,  or  gift";  and  if  not  by  peaceful  means, 
still  less  by  violent  means.  The  Commonwealth 
of  Literature  demands  that  all  her  constituent 
parts  be  respected. 

Literatures  can  help  one  another;  indeed  no 
literature,  unaided  by  another,  can  attain  its 
fullest  development.  As  each  nation  prospers 
best  in  material  things  by  exchanging  commodities 
with  other  nations,  so  each  literature  prospers 
best  by  exchanging  commodities  of  the  intellect. 
The-  cross-breeding  of  minds  is  necessary  for  new 
intellectual  products.  The  history  of  all  litera- 


LITERATURE  AND  COSMOPOLITANISM      221 

tures  is  full  of  the  benefits  derived  from  one  an 
other.  Italy,  Spain,  England,  France,  Germany, 
in  their  respective  flowering  seasons,  owe  much  to 
the  achievements  of  the  others.  Literatures  are 
like  plants  that  need  pollen  wafted  from  afar  in 
order  to  bear  their  brightest  blossoms.  The  in 
fluence  of  Shakspere,  Scott,  and  Byron,  of  Mon 
taigne  and  Rousseau,  of  Petrarch  and  Tasso,  of 
Goethe,  of  Ibsen,  of  all  fertile  genius,  has  been 
nearly  as  great  in  foreign  literatures  as  in  their 
own.  Destroy  one  nation  and  you  deprive  the 
literatures  of  all  other  nations  of  untold  seeds  of 
increase. 

The  unworthy  predicament  in  which  some 
notable  European  men  of  letters  stand,  is  that 
they  have  let  themselves  become  so  drunk  with 
national  egotism  that  they  do  not  perceive  the 
permanent  need  which  the  literature  of  each 
nation  has  of  the  literature  of  all  other  nations, 
and  therefore  they  have  committed  high  treason 
against  the  "Republic  of  Letters." 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


T 


HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  a 
few  of  the  Macmillan  books  on  kindred  subjects. 


H.  G.  WELLSS  NEW  NOVEL 
Mr.  Britling  Sees  It  Through 

BY  H.  G.  WELLS 

Author  of  "  The  Research  Magnificent,"  "  Bealby,"  etc. 
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seeks  to  show  what  the  gigantic  conflict  means  to  those 
who  are  in  the  midst  of  it.  It  is  not  a  tale  of  terrible  con 
ditions  at  the  front,  of  the  horrors  of  actual  warfare,  but  is 
something  deeper  in  its  analysis  of  life  than  that.  The 
scene  is  Matching  Easy,  an  Essex  country  village,  in  which 
is  typified  the  old  England.  Here  Mr.  Britling  lives  and 
here  he  sees  the  changes  which  the  war  brings,  which  are 
again  typical  of  the  changes,  social  and  economic,  which 
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JACK  LONDON'S  NEW  BOOK 
The  Turtles  of  Tasman 

BY  JACK  LONDON 

Author  of  "  The  Valley  of  the  Moon,"  "  The  Sea  Wolf,"  etc. 

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will  be  found  "  By  the  Turtles  of  Tasman,"  a  tale  of  two  brothers  as  different 
in  nature  as  it  is  possible  for  human  beings  to  be,  and  raising  the  old  ques 
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dealing  with  a  crime  and  its  expiation  ;  here  again  "  Told  in  the  Drooling 
Ward,"  a  masterly  bit  of  writing  which  gives  a  human  insight  into  the  life  of 
the  inmates  of  a  home  for  feebleminded  people.  Among  the  other  stories  are 
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57.  JOHN  G.  ERV1NES  NEW  NOVEL 
Changing  Winds 

BY  ST.  JOHN  G.  ERVINE 

Author  of"  Mrs.  Martin's  Man,"  "Alice  and  a  Family,"  etc. 

One  of  the  most  popular  stories  of  recent  times  was  St.  John  G.  Ervine's 
"  Mrs.  Martin's  Man."  With  its  publication  a  year  or  so  ago,  a  new  novelist 
of  distinct  power  and  originality  was  heralded.  Since  that  book  Mr.  Ervine 
has  issued  "  Alice  and  a  Family,"  a  tale  strikingly  different  in  idea  and 
treatment  and  yet  not  a  bit  less  masterly,  and  one  or  two  volumes  of  plays, 
all  of  which  have  gone  to  establish  him  firmly  in  modern  letters.  His  new 
book  has  been  awaited  with  more  than  average  interest.  It  is  entitled 
"  Changing  Winds  "  and  is  said  to  be  as  admirable  a  piece  of  work  both  in 
its  character  drawing  and  in  theme  as  anything  its  author  has  yet  done. 


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NEW  BOOKS  BY  RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 

Author  of"  Gitanjali,"  "  The  Crescent  Moon,"  etc. 

The  Hungry  Stones  and  Other  Stories 

Some  of  the  more  notable  of  Mr.  Tagore's  short  stories  are  here  presented 
in  translations  by  the  author  and  with  illustrations  by  native  Indian  artists. 
Ernest  Rhys,  in  his  biography  of  Tagore,  devotes  much  space  to  a  consider 
ation  of  him  as  a  short  story  writer,  advancing  the  opinion  that  this  particu 
lar  form  of  literature  is  one  of  the  most  important  expressions  of  Tagore's 
genius.  Now  for  the  first  time  English  readers  are  given  the  opportunity  of 
acquainting  themselves  with  this  new  Tagore  and  of  forming  their  own  esti 
mate  of  him.  None  of  the  material  in  this  volume  has  ever  appeared  before 
in  English. 


Fruit  Gathering 


Perhaps  of  all  of  Tagore's  poetry  the  most  popular  volume  is  "  Gitanjali." 
It  was  on  this  work  that  he  was  awarded  the  Nobel  Prize  in  Literature. 
These  facts  lend  special  interest  to  the  announcement  of  this  book,  which  is 
a  sequel  to  that  collection  of  religious  "  Song  Offerings."  Since  the  issue  of 
his  first  book,  some  four  years  ago,  Tagore  has  rapidly  grown  in  popularity 
in  this  country,  until  now  he  must  be  counted  among  the  most  widely  read 
of  modern  poets.  Another  volume  of  the  merit,  the  originality,  the  fine 
spiritual  feeling  of  "  Gitanjali "  would  even  further  endear  him  to  his  thou 
sands  of  American  admirers. 


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Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


NEW  MACMILLAN  FICTION 

THE  NEW  DOSTOEVSKY  NOVEL 

The  Eternal  Husband 

BY  FYODOR  DOSTOEVSKY 

Translated  from  the  Russian  by  CONSTANCE  GARNETT 

"  This  book,"  says  William  Lyon  Phelps  in  his  "  Essays  on  Russian  Nov 
elists,"  "  has  genuine  humor  " —  a  comment  that  one  cannot  often  make  on 
Dostoevsky's  work.  Here  the  great  Russian  realist  is  dealing  with  the  old 
triangle,  but  to  this  theme  he  gives  an  original  variation.  He  presents  an 
abnormal  character  in  abnormal  circumstances.  The  volume  is  an  interest 
ing  and  valuable  addition  to  Mrs.  Garnett's  excellent  series  of  translations. 


Pilot 


BY  H.  PLUNKETT  GREEN 


Pilot  is  a  roguish  and  cunning  dog  who  is  an  inveterate  poacher  and  has  a 
distinct  sense  of  humor.  He  always  gets  the  best  of  the  gamekeepers  and 
other  enemies  and  laughs  in  their  faces.  About  him  Mr.  Green  has  woven  a 
thoroughly  enjoyable  —  and  humorous  —  story.  In  addition  to  this  the  book 
includes  a  number  of  other  tales,  one  or  two  dealing  with  fairies,  with  real 
charm  and  imagination,  and  others  having  to  do  with  boys  and  fishing. 


MAKER'S  NEW  NOVEL 

Gold  Must  Be  Tried  by  Fire 

BY  RICHARD  AUMERLE   MAHER 

Author  of  "  The  Shepherd  of  the  North  " 

From  the  opening  chapter  when  Daidie  Grattan  revolts  at  the  "eternal 
grind,"  defiantly  destroys  a  valuable  piece  of  machinery  in  the  factory  where 
she  is  employed,  and  runs  out  into  the  open,  this  story  is  brimful  of  action 
and  character.  In  "  The  Shepherd  of  the  North,"  Mr.  Maher  demonstrated 
his  ability  to  create  tense  situations.  Here  his  skill  is  once  again  seen  and 
in  addition  he  makes  the  reader  acquainted  with  a  number  of  interesting  peo 
ple,  not  the  least  of  whom  are  Daidie  herself  and  her  ardent  lover. 


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